


Only Knights Left Alive

by WackyGoofball



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, And Moping, Domestic, Drama & Romance, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Immortality, In a way, Jaime has a sword blog, Jaime is very moody, Married Life, Old Married Couple, Romance, So Little Time, So many tags, alternative universe, and Adam level of Emo, and what you do with it, bathrobes and housecoats, because why not?, but I got sword talk instead, for those who have watched the movie, haha just not the way you may think, if that is helping any, if you expect vampires in this fic - this is not the one, like seriously, like seriously - so emo, man, not in JB's case, sorry - no music that makes you feel like you are high on something, they are no vampires, though
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-27
Updated: 2017-05-22
Packaged: 2018-10-11 10:11:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 33,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10462458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WackyGoofball/pseuds/WackyGoofball
Summary: A tale inspired by Only Lovers Left Alive.With Jaime and Brienne. Without vampires. And no Jaime as a moody, broody musician... Hmmmm.Jaime is a melancholic sword blogger in King's Landing, having lived far too long in his opinion.Brienne, his wife, is a much less melancholic sword enthusiast, among many other things, trying to live through a life that just goes on and on and on.But how do you spend eternity?How do you live through it together?And what happens when just that eternity keeps getting challenged?





	1. The Song of Steel: Reforging Ancient Swords in Times of Modernity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SeleneU](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SeleneU/gifts).



> Hello everyone, thanks for looking into this story! ☺
> 
> I have to send some things ahead, as always... 
> 
> I love that movie to bits and pieces. The music. The actors (I mean... Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton *moans*). And I almost feel like I shouldn't even touch this, but... ugh... my prompt fairy, to whom this fic is dedicated, asked me for it, so... BLAME HER! JK. ;) Thing is that I obviously cannot *copy* the cinematography, so... I hope to just transmit some of the vibe, I suppose. 
> 
> I will take up on a lot of plot points of OLLA, but not all. I am taking up on some original lines, but not all (well obviously, lol), and I alter them in most cases. I make some other obvious changes as well, such as the lack of vampirism, to name but one. 
> 
> I am still no native, I still go unbeta'd. All mistakes are mine, safe for the ones I blame on my teachers for not educating me better. 
> 
> I gift this to SeleneU because she forced me, I mean prompted me, to write this. ;) 
> 
> I hope you'll enjoy?
> 
> Much love! ♥♥♥

__

_•○•○•○•○•○•○•○•○•○•○•○•○•○•○•○•_

_Oh, oh, oh, oh, ohhhh._

_Sweet she was, and pure and fair!_

_The maid with honey in her hair!_

_Her hair! Her hair! Her hair! Her hair!_

_The maid with honey in her hair!_

_In  her hair, yo. In her hair._

_The maid, the maid so very fair._

_Oh, oh, oh, oh, ohhhh._

_The bear smelled the scent on the summer air._

_The bear! The bear! The bear! The bear!_

_Yo. Aha. Oh, oh, ohhhh._

_All black and brown and covered with hair!_

_Black and brown! Brown and black!_

_Oh, oh, oh, oh, ohhhh._

_•○•○•○•○•○•○•○•○•○•○•○•○•○•○•○•_

 

Some songs never should get a remake.

Ever.

As this musical torture proves spectacularly.

 _The Bear and the Maiden Fair_ sounds all kinds of wrong when a teenage girl squeals it into the microphone along with a guy who seems to gurgle with _Brillo Pads_ to a repetitive rap beat everyone has already heard in some derivate a thousand times before, with lots of special effects and scratching in all the places where it shouldn’t be to make it sound new when really it isn’t.

_A rap version!_

But that is something the ravages of time prove over and over: Just doing something different doesn’t necessarily make it better.

It just makes it, well, _different_.

And many times… it just sounds wrong.

 _Very wrong_.

But part of the human condition is a certain kind of arrogance, mingled with a sense of discovery, a sense of invention.

Even if it’s only just re-inventions.

Because people keep forgetting that it was already there before.

_Ding-dong._

Jaime groans, running his hand over his face, resting it over his eyes for a moment.

First, a poor excuse of _The Bear and the Maiden Fair_ on the radio, a poor rap excuse on tops, and then… _zombies_.

For a brief moment, he considers just rolling over to pretend to have fallen asleep.

_But then that stupid doorbell will keep ringing._

Because another part of the human condition, or _zombie condition_ , is persistence, obtrusiveness, stubbornness, and being a massive pain in the ass.

Jaime sighs as he gets up, growling when the knot to close his red housecoat won’t hold properly.

Some things don't change, even after so many lives he spent one-handed.

He walks over to the door, kicking away some clothes he didn’t bother picking up the last few… _let’s say **days**_ … to shuffle over to the wooden door. Jaime glances through the peephole, letting out another sigh once he catches sight of who wants to get inside.

Jaime opens the door, his expression blank. “Peck.”

“Jaime, how are you, man?” the young brunet asks as he stands there on Jaime’s front porch with a shoulder bag way too big to fit on the skinny frame.

Jaime lets him inside wordlessly.

“What brings you here?”

“Imagine, I got it, man!” Peck announces, taking off his shoulder bag. “Wanna see it?”

The young man doesn’t wait for Jaime’s reply, and instead kneels down to unzip the bag to retrieve a dusty sword. Peck holds it out to Jaime.

With a cocked eyebrow, Jaime takes it from him, allowing his eyes to roam over the blade with a pensive expression.

“Damascus steel blade. My friend said it dates back to Robert’s Rebellion, so it’s like… really ancient… like two thousand years old or something…”

“More like 939, but who’s counting?” Jaime huffs, twisting the sword a few times.

_The weight is still too familiar. Even though it’s been ages since I last swung a sword to kill a man._

“Well, the handle is pretty worn out by now. The original leather is almost completely gone and someone thought it was funny to try to fix it with some simple overgrip, like for the tennis rackets? Has seen better days.”

“As you know, that is the least of my concerns,” Jaime tells him calmly, eyes fixed on the blade.

It’s not like zombies give a lot on history, or preserving it. They are very busy about forgetting it.

Forgetting themselves.

Because, in the end, history is a story of forgetting.

Just like they forget the proper lyrics, harmony, and melody for the old songs, and think it should be a rap next.

“Right, right,” Peck agrees, nodding his head. “Man, people love your work. Like, I am not even kidding just how _much_ they love it. They’re already hyped about the next project.”

“ _My work_ … what did I say about spreading information online?” Jaime exhales, trying hard not to moan. “You remind me?”

Peck is one of the more bearable zombies. Jaime can even bring himself to consider him a fine zombie, but there are those moments when Peck, like all the others, convinces Jaime of his assessment that zombies are zombies and not worth his time.

And Jaime has a whole lot of time zombies are not worth.

Way too much time not being made worth much of anything.

“I didn’t, but people keep going crazy about your swords. They are collector’s pieces, man. You work some serious magic with these old blades. And people want a bit of that glory.”

“Witchcraft is not on the top of my priority list,” Jaime argues, his voice flat and monotonous.

He didn’t believe in the Old Gods.

He didn’t believe in the New.

Why would he now count on witches?

Witches seem even more ridiculous than some Red God his priests used to proclaim that the evil people, those who did not believe, had to be burned.

_Or **cleansed** , as they called it._

Witches seem also even more ridiculous than some Seven Gods all working as one, in whose names Septs were built where houses could have stood, in whose names wars were fought, people were sanctioned, chased down the streets, humiliated, demonized, imprisoned, and murdered.

_If your gods are real, if they're just, why is the world so full of injustice?_

_Because of men like you._

_There are no men like me. Only me._

“I just restore them to what they once were,” Jaime adds.

“And people love you for it.”

Jaime tries hard not to roll his eyes.

_Back in the day, they hated me for being the Kingslayer. Now they love me for running some sword blog! What a turn of fate!_

If only zombies finally understood that Jaime could not care less about how they feel about him, hatred or love alike.

How did his father always say? They do not concern themselves with the opinion of the sheep.

_Or zombies, for the matter._

And that may be one of the few life lessons, time didn’t blur from Jaime’s memory.

_It may be one o the few good advices he’s ever given me._

“I’d rather have those _loving_ zombies leave me alone,” Jaime says, but at Peck’s shocked grimace, lets out a long sigh.

It’s not Peck’s fault that zombies are zombies.

He was born into a time where history was already a tale of forgetting. So it’s little wonder that he knows as little about the time before him as his peers.

Who gives a shit on who fought in the war against the dead so long the living turned out victory hundreds of years ago anyway?

At some point you don’t question the peace anymore, if it lasts for as long as it does now, you take it as something constant, something naturally given.

As though there never was Winter, but only a long, long Summer.

_Little do they know…_

“But oh well, at least a new blade,” Jaime concludes, distracting himself with the small budding future as he twists the blade in his hands, familiarizes himself with the weight, the texture, the density, shape.  “From the Stormlands, I assume. They used heavier metals because they were more frequent around the area… and the technique used to fold the metal fits more with the Eastern regions… yeah, that should give me some ideas for the design…”

“Do you have a name yet?”

_Because the best swords have names…_

“Feels like a Wavebreaker to me.”

“ _Nice_ ,” Peck agrees happily. “So it’s male.”

“Yes, this one is male,” Jaime tells him. “The blade is too bulky and lacks elegance. Has more of a Warhammer the likes of Robert Baratheon would have swung… before he got fat and drunk. Very fat and very drunk.”

Peck opens his mouth in reply, but that is when both turn their heads abruptly at the sound of footsteps outside.

“Zombies, zombies everywhere,” Jaime exhales, glancing out the window to see them lurking in the dark.

It reminds him of those cold days in the North, where the wolf pack kept looking at them up on the castle walls as they kept watch.

_Just that zombies are far less threatening, but a lot more annoying._

Jaime cranes his neck before walking over to a electric panel by the door to start the sprinklers. And under much shrieking and squealing, the zombies retreat to their cars and drive away.

_How delightful._

“Sorry about that, man, I made sure no one followed me, as you asked me. Took a different route again, over Silk Street this time. I was sure no one caught me.”

“They’ve been here before,” Jaime tells him bluntly. “I don’t think they followed you.”

“Jaime, man, I keep thinking… Maybe your whole reclusive attitude is not doing you any favors,” Peck goes on to say. Jaime keeps his expression blank as he glances out the window. “What’s not _doing me any favors_ is that those zombies keep lurking in my front yard, stepping on my _ipomoea alba_ , the little shits.”

“Your _what_?” Peck asks, his grimace curling into a confused frown.

“My _ipomoea alba_ , my white morning-glory, my moon vine…,” Jaime says, but then stops himself, letting out a sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose. “My flowers.”

They always shine blue in the moonlight.

_Like her eyes… if only zombies didn’t constantly piss on them!_

“Ah, alright. Well, that’s what I was talking about, with your tactics. Maybe it’s time for a change, man. If they lurk around your place like _that_. You know… with that whole ‘ _Not up for Sale’_ … you make them want these swords even more. And that’s why they keep lurking.”

“I don't sell them because they are not up for sale, simple as that. I don't need other people’s money for my work. I just do my work, so I intend to keep it.”

He still has a chest full of gold stags from the Reconstruction period in his attic, each worth a big villa uptown, if not more.

 _The merits of coming from a noble House_ , Jaime assumes. _Or from the times that noble House sat the Iron Throne._

“Hey, man, I know, I know. But the _others_? They don’t get it, so maybe… you know… just sell a few? I don’t know, maybe some of your earlier projects or so. The ones you don’t like as much… a broken one… they’d take _anything_ at this point. I’m not even kidding.”

“If I started selling only just one, they’d lurk around my front yard to get more swords. How does it go? Give him an inch and he’ll take an ell. Whatever way I choose, someone is going to piss in my front yard and step on my _ipomoea alba_. Then I rather keep my weapons to myself.”

He never should have started that blog to post his work in the first place, Jaime knows now.

Back in the day, Jaime, _foolishly_ , thought it was a good idea. Not to get feedback or so, he knows what he is doing. He refined his skills even as a one-handed man.

And little wonder, with all the lives he could spend doing _just_ that.

Jaime actually needed suppliers, needed supplies. No more, no less. And if time has taught him one thing, then it is that you have to show your toys if you want to get into the club.

He needs the leather dressed in traditional tanneries. Not those mass products that have the wrong grip to them.

He needs the metals they used back in the day. If the pommel was gold, it has to be pure gold again, or else the weight is different, the balance is off.

He needs rubies, not red zirconia.

_I need sapphires. Damn, do I need them._

So, to get the things he needs, _for the swords at least_ , Jaime created that stupid blog named _The Song of Steel: Reforging Ancient Swords in Times of Modernity_ , the name purposely boring enough so no one would accidentally stumble over it, or so Jaime had hoped.

He posted some dumb, poorly illuminated pictures of his swords to get better connections, to show that he is worth giving the best materials to, that he can make good use of good steel, gold, leather, and the like, and not the cheap stuff you get at the hobby stores.

Because a blade from the Stormlands needs Stormlandish materials to rebuild it, to recraft it, to revive it from its deep slumber, its endless dreams of time. It has to feel like the old one. It has to have the same texture, the same weight. The leather has to make the same creaking sound as you tighten your grip around the handle. The blade has to cut through the air with the same sound.

_The song of steel._

And for that, you need the ancient materials, for that you need a market available to you.

Well, and Jaime thought that the blog would grant him access to that secret market, that secret stash of resources, promising a bit of glory of the former days. He thought that this was his ticket back in time.

Only to get stuck in the gray mass of today and some faintly gleaming tomorrows.

And suddenly, Peck stood on his front porch and became his dealer, his little ticket handler.

A little smuggler in worn leather jacket still too big for him, trying to mimic Jaime’s style over the time they got to know each other.

He even tries to grow a beard now, which is more peach hair than anything else.

Some orders later, some updates on his blog, and suddenly he had a readership, followers, subscribers, lurkers.

And suddenly, Jaime had a whole lot of attention he did not want.

_At all._

And now he can’t seem to rid himself of it ever again.

While the world keeps forgetting, the internet seems to have a surprisingly good memory.

The internet doesn’t forget.

Not even some stupid sword blog.

_Damn those zombies._

They just keep stealing his time.

Not that Jaime doesn't have enough of it, it’s just that he doesn’t want to waste it on them.

_They are just not worth it, which is telling… if you have **so much** to spare. _

“My supplier said he might be able to track down some Essosi steel blades for you, if you liked. Do you do… ugh, what’s it called? _Arakhs_? He said he can get you one. Rumor has it that Khal Drogo used to have it back in the day.”

_Arakhs are most definitely **not** on my list. I lost quite a bit to a rusty Arakh once, and don’t need revisiting. _

“I stick to Westerosi blades. They have the better materials. And the Dothraki never gave too much on the aesthetics,” Jaime argues. “They were much more focused on murder, rape… pillage and threaten to burn… those kinds of things. That’s not my kind of style.”

“Right, right, what you do is _art_.”

“If you say so.”

Jaime doesn’t care if zombies consider what he does art.

He went to the _King’s Landing Museum of Art_ some time ago, and there, a zombie claimed that a rubber band in a glass box was high art.

_A rubber band in a glass box._

That was the day Jaime realized yet again, for, in these days, it’s not about realizing things once, but re-realizing them, rediscovering them, seeing them in another shape, that he has no clue about art.

Who is he to say that this rubber band in a glass box is _not_ art?

But then again, who are the lurkers stepping on his moon flowers to say that what he does is art?

It’s all too abstract these days.

All just rubber bands in glass boxes.

“Well, I’ll talk to my supplier. Maybe something pops up. I still think he can get me Valyrian steel, but he doesn’t want to admit it because he doesn’t find the price right.”

“I told you often enough that money is the least of my concerns.”

The one thing Jaime no longer has to concern himself… _ever_.

“Yeah, I know, man, but the price he gave me was… nuts. I know what Valyrian steel costs on the market, and that was far from it. I’ll talk him into it little time from now. You’ll see.”

“Do what you have to do,” Jaime says, waving his hand dismissively.

What should he care?

Whether he gets the blade tomorrow or a hundred years from now, it hardly makes a difference these days.

“Is there something else you need?”

Jaime licks his lips. “There might be something.”

_A way out of eternity, perhaps._

“Hey, whatever you need, man, whatever you need. I can get it for you. I mean, it’ll take some time, but you’ve been helping me so greatly, so…”

“Obsidian.”

“O _what_?” Peck frowns at him, taking out his little notepad and pen, waiting for instructions, definitions.

“Obsidian, frozen fire, dragonglass. I need a dagger made of obsidian.”

“Man, never heard of that stuff.”

“The stuff that they used to kill the Others with, the White Walkers, the… nevermind. Can you get me an obsidian dagger? Note it down,” Jaime says, gesturing at the pad. “Obsidian. Frozen fire. Dragonglass.”

Peck is busy scribbling on the yellow paper, nodding his head despite the fact that both know that he does by no means nod his head in understanding, as clueless as his expression is.

Jaime sighs, gesturing as he speaks, “This long. Sharp. I don’t just need the dragonglass, but I need a finished dagger. I can’t sharpen it myself – an expert has to do it for me, it’s different than steel blades.”

“Obsi…”

“O-b-s-i-d-i-a-n,” Jaime spells out, growing annoyed.

Peck is likable, but so very slow at times, as though he had time to spare, when in fact, he is just the blink of an eye.

“Well, I’ll ask around, man. I think I know someone who can help you with that. But… uhm… what for?” Peck asks.

“A project. A secret… _art_ … project.”

_If they call it art, why shouldn’t I go along with it?_

“Oh, cool. That’s… cool,” Peck replies, nodding his head. “Anything else you’d want?”

“No, thanks. That is all. Just the obsidian dagger,” Jaime tells him.

“Oh, okay. Alright, well, uhm, then…,” Peck says, but Jaime interrupts him before he can go on, “You have to be on your way. Well, you know where the door is.”

“Actually, uhm, can I use your bathroom little quick?” Peck asks, biting his lower lip nervously.

“I’m afraid it’s still out of order,” Jaime argues, motioning over to the door to make him leave at last.

Just because he has so much time to spare doesn’t mean he has any intention to spare it.

Just like it doesn’t mean you have to share your bathroom with anyone.

“Still? It’s been months?!”

“Yeah, still. Sorry for the trouble. Feel free to piss in my garden so long you don’t sprinkle on my moon flowers. Bye, Peck.” Jaime gives him a gentle shove out the door before closing it with a thud.

“Zombies.”

* * *

 

 Brienne makes her way down the corridors of Winterfell.

Nothing much has changed about them, and that despite so many years having passed since it was first built, and then rebuilt after a lot was destroyed before and after the Long Night.

And she is glad for it. It gives her a feeling of belonging she oftentimes finds herself lacking when she has to rent yet another apartment.

She feels less detached from a past that is still so close to her despite the fact that it is so far away from almost everyone else.

Brienne knocks on one of the old wooden doors, smiling at the hurried shuffling sound of footsteps.

_So many things change, but there are also those that seemingly never do._

The door opens, revealing a familiar face.

Which is rare enough in a world that constantly changes, renews itself, before her eyes, while she goes on and on and on again.

“Sam! It’s so good to see you,” Brienne says, giving the dark-haired man a brief hug and a warm smile. “How are you?”

“It’s good to see you, too. And I am very well, thank you. You?"

"I can't complain."

"You wouldn't complain even if there was something to complain about," he snorts.

"You know me too well."

And Brienne finds herself appreciating that more than maybe she should. Because she only feels that sense of familiarity with the people sharing her fate.

She has other friends, she has people she feels close to, that's not the thing, but it is to people the likes of Sam that she feels most connected to, feels like she can say what she normally has to keep to herself because people do not understand.

_Or cannot._

How do you explain that, really?

How do you explain eternity?

“And how is _he_?” Brienne asks with a grimace.

“The Maester is weak, but his spirit remains unbroken,” Sam says, leading her inside.

“Davos is a man who remains unbroken,” Brienne says with a small smile.

There was a time when she wanted his death, no way around it.

Back when her heart still sang the sad laments for Renly, and she vowed revenge for his murder.

And Davos surely had little love in his heart for her in the beginning, too, after she told him that she was the one who slew his King in turn, swung the sword to pass the sentence Stannis brought upon himself with kinslaying, his own little brother no less.

But if life has taught Brienne one thing, then it is that sentiments such as hatred are all but fleeting in the end.

At least they grow to be once you don’t pass them over to the next generation to uphold in your stead.

Wars come to an end the moment hatred flits away, through the window, into a cloud of ash.

The only sentiment that has the power to last much longer?

_Love._

"He is a tenacious man, no matter how much time passed already to perhaps water down some of that spirit," Sam agrees.

“Of course. That's what people the likes of him are made of. Well, luckily, he has you to tend to him. He is in the most able hands,” Brienne says, giving Sam’s hand a gentle squeeze.

“He is like family to me now. He’s helped me a lot with Little Sam, after… after Gilly left us.”

She squeezes his hand another time, tighter this time. There was a time when Brienne was afraid of those touches, but these days, she sees that her discomfort does not necessarily diminish the comfort she can give with the brush of her calloused fingertips.

Brienne knows Sam is still hurting from the loss. He loved Gilly truly, there is no doubt in that, but she was not like them once the war came to an end. They lived through a long spring of Reconstruction. Gilly saw Little Sam grow up to a man, but then she passed away of old age, leaving her two loved ones with no other choice but to cover her grave in Gilly flowers to bid her farewell as they carried on without her.

“He loves Little Sam,” Brienne goes on to say.

And Davos truly does. He already helped with the child when Gilly was still alive. Perhaps he saw something from the past reflected in Sam’s big blue eyes as he got to know the world, and it seemed to ease some of the pain out of the Onion Knight’s body as the world was rebuilt around them.

Since Gilly passed away, Davos was ever the more supportive of Sam, helped him through the grief, sharing with him his own pain, mingled in stories of a past long left unseen, uncovered, offering to talk even late at night when Sam just couldn’t find rest without Gilly by his side, and the two somehow carried on, as Gilly would have wanted them to, for Little Sam’s sake.

_Though Little Sam is hardly little anymore._

“How does Sam like it at the Citadel?” Brienne asks, and the flash of pride is right back in Sam’s eyes.

A father’s pride.

One of those things that time cannot wash away.

One of those things that grief cannot destroy.

And one of those things Brienne won't witness.

There was a time when she envied Sam, if only in secret.

_If only in Jaime's arms as he held me while the tears kept falling. And he wouldn't let go of me until the tears had dried._

It took Brienne some time to let go of the idea, but these days, it's even less than a dull ache.

And once she started doing what Davos did, namely to put effort into Little Sam instead of her own self-pity, the ache faded and smiles returned.

“Oh, he likes it now. He was a little irritated at first… the Citadel is not much different from back when I got my chain. Just that it’s now no longer a chain but a certificate. But he found some friends now.”

“Then it’s well.”

She always found it a pity that they let go of the tradition to reward the Maester's achievements in the specific fields with new chain links. There was something heavy about it, not only in terms of the actual weight of the chains, but about the symbolism, the meaning. A sheet of paper, framed, hanged upon a wall, seems far more fleeting.

_But it seems that our kind just tends to grow old-fashioned._

“It doesn’t get any easier, even after all this time, I will admit,” Sam says, shrugging his shoulders.

“They grow up too fast.”

“Indeed. But I thought it’d get easier at some point. I mean… how many years is it now? He has been to other places, many places, all across the Seven Kingdoms, but the Citadel… now that I am so bound up here in the North, it seems very far away,” Sam sighs.

“Well, gladly, we no longer have to wait or ravens to arrive,” Brienne argues. “Those took _forever_.”

“True, telephones and video chats make it a lot easier,” Sam replies, nodding his head. “Well, we should go ahead then. C’mon.”

Sam leads her over to a separate room, or rather, a chamber just like it was back in the old days. An old wooden bed, an old wooden study, furs, quilted blankets, old banners on the walls.

Some echoes from the past are the most precious sources of comfort.

“Just go on. I still have some work to do.”

“Thank you. We still have to sit down and talk some more, once you find the time.”

“Once I find the time… one should think that I finally have enough of it, huh? But it never seems to be enough," Sam exhales. "There is still so much to study, so much to learn, so many books to read..."

“I am sure we will find a bit of your precious time to spare for me.” Brienne smiles.

“For you of course.” She laughs before opening the door.

“Lady Brienne,” Davos, sitting on the bed, calls out to her, flashing a bright smile at her as she approaches.

All these familiar faces... they help her feel at home at a time when she feels like the whole world has grown to be her home.

Or rather, has grown to be her places to be, scratching away at the memories of what home really is.

Safe for the one she always knows will be hers.

_Despite the fact that it's busy in King's Landing instead of here in Winterfell._

“Hardly a lady, you know that,” she argues, chuckling softly, motioning inside.

She settles down next to him on the bed, which creaks under her weight.

“As I am hardly a Maester, yet, here we are.”

“You got your chains like Sam did, so you are, by rights a Maester,” she insists, pointing at the links hanging on the wall as a constant reminder of the achievement Davos likely was the one to expect the very least. “So? How are you?”

“Have seen better days, I assume, but haven’t we all?”

“More or less.”

They have seen some many dark days, dark ages, even, but there also were those of light, of hope, when the first flowers broke through the melting snow and he looked at her with the expression she thought she’d never find reflected in a man’s face as he looked upon her.

“I got something for you,” Davos says, nodding at the familiar metal case, resting on the nightstand.

“The good stuff?”

“Only the good stuff. You know me.”

“Yes, I do know you, Ser Davos Seaworth.”

She didn’t always, but war seems to make you band together in ways that you can only comprehend once you stood, back to back, fighting against death itself.

That is when trust is born out of hatred, rises from the ashes, from the graves, and leaves you wondering how it comes that you took so long to let go of that stabbing sensation, poking holes deep into your chest.

“Hardly a Ser anymore these days, I told you. You shouldn’t call me that, at least not anymore. I’m even less of a Ser than I am a Maester,” he snorts.

“You served well, my friend. And you know how it is, once you are knighted, you hold that title till the day you die.”

Even if it lasts for hundreds of years and more.

You vow for life, and so it only makes sense that a vow should last as long as life itself does, too.

“That was a long time ago," he argues, running his fingers through his white beard.

“And so it was for us. The Long Night was not as long, by comparison.” She smiles.

“A short Long Night,” he chuckles.

Intense, on the verge of tearing them apart, but short, compared to the lives they now live, the time they now spend and have spent already.

_It seems like time has to be measured according to intensity and not just duration._

“Still as deadly as a long Long Night.”

“That is true… So, I assume you’ll be sending some of the good stuff bdack home?” Davos asks.

_Though it’s not really a question._

“Of course. He can’t get it down South. Wrong climate.”

“You know it’d be much easier if you both just stayed here.”

“You don't have to tell _me_ ,” Brienne huffs, amused.

They lived together in Winterfell for a longer while, after they spent many decades in Casterly Rock. Brienne thought Jaime liked it there well enough, now with Spring and Summer taking the place of long, demanding, excruciating Winters.

However, there was longing in his eyes, his movements grew rigid, lethargic, until it was clear to both that he needed some time away from Winterfell, the Wall, the North more generally. Brienne, by contrast, has a job going on she likes well enough, and with Davos not doing so well, she wanted to stay around, and Jaime agreed.

They never hold each other back. That was one of those things that never needed explaining or demanding, they just naturally stuck to that over the years and centuries. When Brienne wanted to move away from Essos because she didn’t like it there, Jaime didn’t question it any further and they went together. He had nothing to hold him in Meereen, so there were no misgivings.

That doesn’t change anything about the longing still throbbing beneath the skin, even though they are only a phone call or a video chat apart.

“You know that you could make him,” Davos laughs. "If only you asked."

“I won’t make him do anything he doesn’t want to do. You know how it is after so many years… you don't have to be around each other the whole time, like the newlyweds,” Brienne snorts.

Not like they were after they took their vows.

They barely moved apart, sought the contact, the lack of distance.

Sought each other.

There was something strangely thrilling about it, to move as one, to eat as one, to be one.

However, the thrill wears down after some three hundred years. Or rather, you no longer need it as much. You welcome it once it arises, but you don’t chase it.

While, by contrast, the thrill seems much stronger when they meet again after spending miles and times apart.

_It is like falling right back into love again._

History is oftentimes one of repetitions, after all.

_And those are the best of repetitions._

“Still, it’s uneconomical, even he should see that. Just what is he doing in King’s Landing, still? There is nothing there that he can’t do here. What is his hobby again?” Davos frowns pensively.

“Reviving swords back to former glory. And for that, King’s Landing is the better place to be. Better resources, he told me. Shipping to Winterfell is just about awful. We all know _that_ ,” Brienne huffs, rolling her eyes.

_Sometimes it feels like they still send the mail via raven._

“I always wonder how you don’t run any trouble sending the good stuff down South,” he chuckles.

“Holding a doctor’s degree sometimes comes to have its merits, I realized. They still think I am running a private clinic, so I can send medicine from A to B. Even if it’s just the good stuff, actually. They think it’s some antidote for Greyscale,” Brienne explains.

“Greyscale is long since extinct,” Davos argues, making a face.

“To their knowledge, there are still some cases across the Narrow Sea. Since King’s Landing has the biggest port to the Eastern side, it makes sense for me to ship these things to there. Well, and a friend in Essos claims to have received the antidote. So no one is ever asking questions. After all, Greyscale no longer exists indeed.”

_Jaime’s idea, actually._

“Gladly so,” he exhales.

“Yes,” Brienne sighs, clapping him on the thigh once. “In any case, I think I should be on my way. You need the rest.”

“I need way too much rest these days,” Davos huffs.

“And you deserve it. Take your time. After all, if there is one thing we have, then it’s time,” she smiles, tapping the back of his hand before standing up.

She takes the metal case full of good stuff and motions to the door.

“I’ll see you soon.”

“I’ll be there.”

They can take the time, after all.


	2. Messages

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime has to pick up a delivery. 
> 
> Jaime gets a phone call. 
> 
> Brienne gets something to do. 
> 
> I suck at summaries.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone!
> 
> Thanks for sticking around, for kudoing and commenting. You are amazing! ♥♥♥
> 
> So yeah, I hope you'll enjoy this chapter!

Jaime sighs as he walks through the dark parking lot, pulling at his shirt and pants as he goes.

He hates wearing scrubs. Loose in all the places where he likes it a little tighter. And it drains any remaining color from his face to make him look like a zombie indeed, but more like those from the cheap horror movies produced some one hundred years ago.

The ones with the outstretched arms and grunting noises – and bad greenish make-up.

_They are blue and white as ice, for Gods’ sake._

Needless to mention that Jaime had to listen to, or rather, suffer through, a horrific remake of _Six Maids in a Pool_ , now called _Six Girls in a Pool_ , performed by some wannabe womanizer singing about laying all those chicks in a hot tub, though he likely never gets laid in the first place.

_I should only ever listen to the music lists Brienne gave me. Those songs seem more bearable._

Brienne holds on to the old songs a lot more than he thought she ever would, because Brienne is not the nostalgic sort of person, not as straightforward, really. She holds dear all memories around her, but she is not the one to linger in the moments without a clear idea of what is ahead of her.

Something that Jaime, however selfishly, sometimes finds himself envying her for.

The music, however? His wife never adapted to the so-called _modern age_ in that regard.

She could bring herself to gramophones and vinyls, because rarely do you get a chance to have a choir sing those old songs to you in your living room, and Brienne even brings herself to listen to CDs and mp3, but that is born out of necessity to have the means to listen to the old music. If she had a choice, Brienne would probably like it as she had it back in court hundreds of years ago, when the singers and dancers performed for them, and the brightest of smiles crept up her lips as she enjoyed their performances, and richly rewarded them for the many times they were admitted to court to raise their voices for the King and Queen.

Brienne rarely listens to any of those new pop bands. She says that the melodies just cut ahead of her at some point, and she never bothered catching up again. What is the renewal of swords for Jaime is the good remakes of the songs and ballads of when they lived their first lives, when she was only just the Maid of Tarth and he the Kingslayer, for Brienne.

Sword blogs, old music, antique books, or chasing dragons, they all have their own ways of coping with the past slipping through their fingers as time carries on and on and on.

_Speaking of sword blogs…_

To his great pleasure – _not really_ – Jaime gained ten more subscribers to his stupid sword blog last night, likely the friends of the lurkers who stepped on his moon vines and now want to glance at his shitty photographs.

Maybe he should rename it to _Song of What Pisses Me off: A Chronicle of Lurkers Violating Guest Rights and Being Massive Pains in the Ass_.

Jaime grumbles some incoherent curses to himself as he motions inside the building, full of sick and dead things.

It’s strange at times, to see the elderly, the sick, because it appears so far removed from their lives these days that Jaime has a hard time remembering what “age” actually is or is supposed to mean.

It is about as abstract as the definition as art to him.

As a young man, Jaime was convinced that he wouldn’t die of old age. That he would go down in battle. That he would get the hero’s death, or however much of a hero’s death a Kingslayer who flung a child out a window can have.

Jaime never saw himself as an old man, with white beard, creaking joints, walking with a hunch, liver spots on the skin, creases, wrinkles, milky eyes, and missing teeth.

And at some point, he had the rights of it, despite the fact that he has that age – multiple times – by now.

It’s as though he should feel those liver spots, those creaking joints, but does not.

Jaime maneuvers to the counter, ignoring the smells evading his nose, his head, his mind.

He leaves his prosthetic hand to the side of his body, so not to draw attention to it, not because Jaime means to hide it away underneath a golden hand, no, no. He just wants to be sure to fade from people’s memory around here. That is one of the best ways to bypass questions.

Oh, how did that happen? How long has it been since the accident? How is physio going?

And Jaime knows that he cannot tell people just how he lost his hand – and he doesn’t bother for the most part to make up lies in its stead.

“Hello, I am here for a medication delivery from _Renly Baratheon Memorial Clinic_ ,” he tells the nurse as he leans against the counter casually. The red-haired woman has her eyes fixed on the screen and only turns her head roughly his direction once before retreating back to the world lying behind the screen.

“Here is my card,” Jaime goes on to say as he slides the ID across the counter. The young woman takes it, glances at it, checks the computer, then nods slowly, absently. “Yeah, just go to the pharmacy down the corridor, Dr. ugh _Dayne_. The box arrived today. It should be there for you to pick up. Just show them this note and you should run no trouble.”

She hands him his ID along with a manila sheet of paper.

“Thank you,” Jaime says as he takes the items, offering a smile that stays unreceived as the ginger’s eyes are instantly back on the screen. Jaime rolls his shoulders as he starts walking away.

_Good talk._

He actually learned to appreciate people’s drifting away and lack of attention.

It makes staying under the radar so much easier.

Jaime makes his way down the hallways until he comes to the pharmacy, and goes through the same process again.

_Hello. This is why I am here. Thank you. Bye. The “have a nice day” is optional, depending on how the zombie behaves._

It’s always the same procedures, just with a different zombie, a different counter, and with another colored sheet to take along.

Soon, he has the cooling box in hand, promising another drink of time.

“Oh uhm, Doctor Dayne, before you go: The delivery came with this here, said we’re supposed to give it to you. Instructions, I assume,” the blond man behind the counter tells him, holding out a white envelope to him.

“Thanks,” Jaime says, taking the envelope with a smile spreading across his face. “Have a nice day.”

Yet again, that last note stays unreturned. Not that Jaime minds, though. His thoughts are far too focused on that little letter.

He quickly makes his way outside again.

Jaime hates the smell of the dead.

It reminds him of battlefields.

Trampled down snow, covered in mud and blood, slowly melting it, but only just almost.

Screams overshadowing last living breaths.

It reminds him of the things he doesn’t have.

_Not anymore._

Little time later, Jaime is back in his car, his deep red _Lionstar_. Away from the zombies, the smell of the dead, replaced by the not really pleasant but much more bearable odor of a tree-shaped air fresheners, _Highgarden’s Roses_ this time.

Brienne always says that he is compensating with that big, fancy car, with which Jaime _obviously_ disagrees, always pointing out to her that _she_ of all people should know there is _no_ reason for him to be _compensating_.

Jaime switches on the lights and starts to rip open the envelope.

 _With the old wax seal, quartered, crescent moons starbursts, and the Lannister lion_ , Jaime notes with a grin. _Aren’t we awfully traditional, Brienne?_

He chuckles as he unfolds the paper, feeling the texture between his fingertips. She always uses old paper, Jaime knows. Brienne tends to say it gives letters an aura of importance that text messages could never achieve.

_Though she no longer uses parchment._

In the end, both hold on to the past, if in different ways.

Once you know that history is very much about forgetting, you tend to give your best to remember all those shreds and pieces left neglected in the history books.

Even if it’s just an old-fashioned way of communication.

Or perhaps just an air of nostalgia meant to give importance to a letter that is by no means as great as you make it out to be. Because, in the end, it’s paper with ink, while the other is numerical codes, efficient and fast.

Jaime holds the paper closer to the light to read what is written in bold, neat letters.

Yet another constant Jaime discovered over the centuries. The world can change all around, but Brienne of Tarth’s handwriting will forever be a neat signature you could print in a book.

_Do not do anything stupid while I am not around._

_The ten words every man wants to hear from his wife_ , Jaime thinks to himself, a smirk creeping up his lips as his gaze lingers on the words.

Some other things never change, no matter the time, no matter the space. And it’s not just her handwriting or music taste.

They both enjoy a good fight, and nothing was scratched away or smoothed over by the ravages of time.  That never changed and likely won’t ever.

The jest never died down, the playfulness that came to full bloom once Winter started to cease and the first buds of Spring broke through the snow.

What they feel for each other, while taking different shapes every now and then, doesn’t die down, doesn’t fade away.

_And that she still feels the urge to tell me what to do._

He flips the letter over, chuckling softly at the P.S. with the three little words people in love want to hear.

_I miss you._

Because the other three words are left unspoken these days.

_Have been for a long time._

You just know it at some point, you carry it in your heart instead of on the tip of your pen.

Or well, the metaphorical thing, not the pound of flesh keeping you from dying, _the little bitch_.

Jaime shakes his head with a smile before he starts the engine to drive away.

It’s time for some _post scriptum_ of his own, as it appears.

* * *

 

 _Ring-ring_.

Jaime rolls up from his bed with a moan to fumble for the receiver that should be on the nightstand…

_Oh, fell over. Makes sense, then._

Jaime twists on the bed to extend his arm, finally fishing out the telephone on the floor as the thing keeps ringing shrilly.

He makes a mental note to get a new one, or to program a new ringtone. This one drills holes right into his brain.

“Hello?” he murmurs, rubbing his eyes.

“Jaime.”

He sits up on bed at once, finding his heart beating faster, but then calmer again.

“Brienne.”

She smiles. The sound of his voice, even if distorted by the bad connection, still has a strange sort of effect on her. It sends Brienne back to the first times he called her by her first name, after he normally had some nasty nickname for her.

But over time, it swelled with emotion, it was like a container that suddenly gained content.

Like her name grew in meaning.

A private meaning that only unfolds once it travels across his lips.

_Only his._

“Did the package arrive?” she asks, rubbing her the fingertip of her thumb and index finger against each other absently.

“Yes, picked it up just now,” Jaime replies, running his stump over the back of his head. “Or well, _Dr. Dayne_ did.”

“I thought you preferred Hightower as of late?”

“That was two hundred years ago. Also, Hightower was an ass. Well, so was Dayne, in the retrospective, but who isn’t, really?” Jaime shrugs, rolling his shoulders.

“Maybe you should just get yourself a degree on your own. Then you wouldn’t have to fake it. Dr. Lannister would have a nice ring to it, don’t you think?” she suggests.

“Where would be the fun in that? I love the thrill of almost getting caught,” he laughs.

“You hate it, we both know that.”

“I don't need another degree,” Jaime snorts.

_I already start to lose track of the ones I have._

“You don't have a medical degree yet,” Brienne argues.

“But plenty of other degrees that convince me that I don't need another. Not if there is the easy way of having a brother who knows the kinds of people who can get you those fancy fake IDs no one bothers questioning.”

“Well, it’s up to you,” Brienne sighs. “It’s not like there is a rush.”

“Right,” he chuckles, but then stops himself, remembering for what he ordered not long ago.

_Maybe there is a rush again, all of a sudden? After there was none for years and years?_

“I hope all vials are intact. Last time, two broke, you told me,” Brienne says, pulling Jaime out of his thoughts.

_Back to her._

“No, it’s alright this time around,” he replies in a casual voice. “I guess you should stick to _Westeros Parcel Service_ instead of _United Seven Kingdoms Postal Service_. Their acronym is already too long to be fast in terms of delivery.”

“Yeah, might be. We’ll see once we have the net delivery, I assume,” Brienne says pensively.

“Supposedly.”

“How are you?” Brienne questions, in the kind of voice that reminds Jaime almost instantly of the one plain truth that means so much more than any zombie could ever comprehend.

How much she cares for him.

How much he cares for her.

How much they care for each other.

“Lost without you, but you know that,” he replies in an easy voice.

Those are the things that are so easy to say these days that it seems almost utopian that there was a time, a space, where both shied away from that one simple truth, hid behind promises and oaths, swords and honor.

But for a very long time now, saying these things, saying those words, no longer trying to pretend that this is the meaning they carry in their hearts when they say something else to cover up that very circumstance, it’s as easy as breathing.

“Speaking of… can you hold on a second? I didn’t see you for so long. A phone call just doesn't do. Are you at home so we can video chat?” he goes on to ask.

“Yes. We can do that,” Brienne agrees.

Jaime walks over to his computer to start the video chat.

“This always takes forever,” Jaime exhales, looking at the screen with growing annoyance.

“Next time, I’ll send you a text beforehand so that you can prepare your computer,” Brienne chuckles softly.

“You really better should. I feel so inadequate. Not even properly dressed and styled for seeing my wedded wife after all this time,” Jaime goes on to say, feigning distress.

“Oh please,” Brienne huffs, rolling her eyes.

That man looked attractive with mud caked on his cheeks, unkempt hair, malnourished, and weak from losing his hand.

_And he damn well knows that._

“So you tell me, is the North still as cold as I remember it to be?” Jaime asks, running his stump over the tabletop absently as he waits for the computer to finally be ready.

“Well, _Winter has Come_ , so it’s no longer so freezing that it feels like your fingers are falling off from the cold, but it’s still not as hot as in the South,” Brienne replies, running her fingers over the cotton sheets of her bed. “And it won’t ever be.”

“Ha, I knew it. I’d constantly get chills on the bladder, I am sure.”

“You never did, and you were there when it was the coldest, remember?” she snorts, rolling her eyes.

“I’d still get it. If only for Ned Stark’s ghost haunting Winterfell, giving me chills in the bladder.”

“Because that is what Ned Stark’s ghost would focus on.”

“You know that man despised me to his last living breath…,” Jaime argues, but then stops. “Alright, I’m set. Calling you now…”

Brienne waits for the icon to pop up on her phone. She swipes across the screen, and leans back on her cushion to put less strain on her neck as his image finally appears.

“Ah, there you are,” he smiles, his voice soft and filled with fondness.

 _And he still as handsome as always_ , Brienne thinks to herself with a grin. _Yet again one of those things that seemingly never changes._

“Here I am,” she says with a soft grin.

Jaime smirks at the screen, her image, her smile.

Brienne’s smiles became more frequent over the years and centuries, like a seal removed from her mouth the moment on love was admitted and wars ended.

At first, there were just shy smiles, barely visible, invisible to those who ignored it.

But obviously, Jaime paid close attention.

And as he paid attention, Jaime saw the changes in the way she looked at him, the way she laughed at him.

Awkwardness and shyness faded, not just in the realm of their shared chambers, but over the years, grew to be a strange sort of boldness, a strange sort of calmness. A certainty in the way she moved, in the way she let her lips curl. And in their stead, smiles bloomed as green buds broke through the Winter’s ice and snow.

_A Dream of Spring._

“My lady,” he says.  

“My lord,” she chuckles. These days, it is sadly out of fashion to call each other that, though gladly, Jaime never really cares about the opinion of others, even less those of the zombies. Because, truth be told, Brienne likes the sound of them. They are so familiar and hold a kind of closeness that grew with time.

She looks at the screen a little closer, her lips curling into a frown. “What is it with you? You look tired. You do take the stuff I send, don’t you?”

“Yes, I do,” he assures her with a sigh. “As my lady doctor prescribed it.”

“You know you have to look after yourself more.”

_Especially now that I am not close enough to do it for you, you fool._

“As you keep reminding me, my love,” he exhales.

“What is the matter with you, then? And don't you tell me not to sweat it,” Brienne insists.

She knows this man by now, she really does.

He can try to hide, but he will no longer succeed.

_Never again._

“It’s just the zombies. They are driving me crazy, Brienne.”

“I thought you changed the blog settings to private to keep the zombies away?”

 _If only you could do just that in real life!_ Jaime thinks to himself.

“I did, but it’s no way of helping it. Imagine that! Some asshole found it funny to hack my blog and make it public again. I should just delete that thing… but I need to suppliers. I can’t believe that I have to rely on zombies,” Jaime grunts, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Maybe you should stop calling them zombies?” she suggests.

“But what if they are?” Jaime argues, with a faux dramatic undertone.

“They are not. You know what actual zombies are by contrast,” Brienne snorts. “ _You_ of all people should know the difference.”

They fought _actual_ zombies, back in the day.

And humans are not at all like them.

At least not the ones Brienne tends to encounter.

There was not one that tried to eat her face as of late.

“But they _act_ like zombies. They live into the day, they waste their time, don’t see any value in what they have. Or don’t have and don't see the worth in not having to deal with it. They could make their time count much easier than us, and still, they waste their precious time over and over again,” Jaime sighs. “And it’s making me sick.”

“People are blind, we long since knew that.”

“But it starts to wear you so many years, to see that the human condition just won’t change, wouldn’t you agree?” he argues.

“Humans change very slowly,” Brienne replies.

Though Jaime has the rights of it, she is aware.

After the Long Night ended, a part of Brienne was convinced that many systems embedded into society would change, but they did not. People were calling for old political systems, some even for more ancient ways of government, instead of the new. Democracy was far, far away, so far that you couldn’t even see it glistening at the horizon.

And these days, Brienne is bound to observe again and again how people now want the Seven Kingdoms as separate, sovereign countries instead of a political, social, and economic unity, as they have it these days.

Change happens so very slowly that, when you are bound to watch it happen, it feels as though just a single grain of sand falls through the hourglass only once upon a time.

“Did _we_ change just as slowly, you tell me?” Jaime asks, looking at her.

Back in the day, it felt to him as though on change chased the other, not just the external ones, but also the internal ones. Even though those lines tend to blur over time. Because it was external circumstances that helped bring forth internal changes.

The greatest one being his wedded wife.

“Well, truth be told, there are those moments when I find myself acting like I was all those years ago, despite the fact that I should know better. There are times when I still feel like I was when I was all but a young girl, green as summer grass… I don’t think we change progressively. We just change every now and then. I suppose humans… just need a moment to ignite that light,” Brienne tells him, rolling her broad shoulders.

“You ignited a light, back when it mattered,” Jaime chuckles.

_As a sword took flame amidst a battlefield, for no one but me to see._

So here we go again with history forgetting its heroes way too often.

The songs unsung.

The hero’s tale that should have been a heroine’s.

Because from-rags-to-riches stories with hidden ancestries sell better in the history books than an ugly woman wielding a sword to bring a spark of light to a battlefield clouded in darkness and blood, to protect her loved ones.

Not that either of them minds these days, or even back when their records started to fade from public memory. By that time, Jaime and Brienne agreed wholeheartedly that the only opinion that mattered to them were their own.

_And gladly, nothing has changed about that since._

“Well, not always is there a war to save the human race that needs to be fought with Valyrian steel blade in hand, against the army of the dead. I suppose there were stronger impetuses back in our days. A loss of a hand, a leap down a bear pit, a war against the undead, dragons… those things tend to frame you in different ways than… living at peace and watching the seasons change so very slowly that this summer feels like it lasts for too long to be true,” Brienne explains.

“But still,” Jaime insists.

It’s as though the world is in deep slumber, a lethargy stretching across the lands that were fought for, the lands people died for so they could live into the day the way they do now.

“Jaime,” she sighs.

“Maybe I am just moody,” he concludes, looking at her again to find his spirits rising, the way they always do when he is around her.

She manages to make him forget about the world forgetting itself.

She can hush those growing wishes of a dagger made of onyx away with only just a single smile.

“Can’t we talk about something else, my love?” he suggests with a grin. “Perhaps the little tease you give me here, calling me while lying on the bed in only just a quilted robe, in Lannister red no less?”

The pout that follows is inevitable, but oh so sweet.

No matter how many lives they have lived through already, Brienne’s being flustered at those things is a precious gift only Jaime is entitled to.

“It is _no_ tease, you idiot. That is what you wear around here. It keeps you warm,” Brienne insists, fighting a blush, despite the fact that she knows that this is a fight she will not win.

“No way it keeps you as warm as _I_ could.”

“Well, my darling, you are a thousand miles away from me, so I think my quilted robe, _in Lannister red no less_ , will have to do to keep me warm in your stead,” Brienne retorts with a huff and a hint of a grin.

“I know some ways to keep you warm even at a distance. I’d just need a bit of… well, your own _assistance_ ,” Jaime tells her with an increasingly dirtier growing grin.

“We are _not_ doing phone sex.”

“It would be _video chat_ sex,” Jaime argues. “That means we’d also get some visuals!”

“We are not doing that either.”

“But that’d make you feel _very_ warm, even in the icy, icy North that may still give you a chill on the bladder like me.”

“… How is it going with the swords?” Brienne asks with a sigh.

“You are changing topics!”

“You asked me to talk about something else.”

“I didn't ask you to talk about something else but phone sex, or lead away from the opportunity that just arose!” Jaime argues with a ridiculously smug grin, he knows.

“Tell me about your swords, and now don’t make a joke about the sword that’s below the waistline. You have overused that joke two hundred years ago.”

“It's a classic,” he laughs.  

“It’s old and used-up.”

“My sword isn’t.”

“Jaime,” she groans.

“You handed that one to me on a silver platter, you know that.”

“I know I did, but sometimes I bear the faint hope that you won’t jump on it,” Brienne exhales, shaking her head.

“You should know me better than that.”

“Don't make me angry with you.”

“Don't be, my love. I am here without you. I am lonely. Then those thoughts keep _arising_ as I lie in bed, thinking about you,” he chimes.

“I am still waiting for that update on your sword project, which is the reason why you are in King’s Landing in the first place,” Brienne insists.

Jaime sighs.

Yet another thing that will never change about Brienne of Tarth: Her utter stubbornness.

“You are serious about the no phone sex policy right now, aren’t you?”

Brienne just looks at him.

“I will take that as a ‘yes,’ then,” Jaime grumbles.

“You do know me well, my darling.” She smiles.

“That I do, better than most… but anyway… since you are being a spoilsport, teasing me in quilted bathrobes I am not sure have anything underneath… I have a new sword project now. A blade from the Stormlands. Back from before Robert’s Rebellion. Imagine that, they used overgrip for the handle. It was yellow and hideous.”

“Oh, this hurts me.” Brienne makes a face.

_Who would do that to a sword?_

“Tell me about it, I had to peel it off for ages. And I may add, doing that one-handed is not easier by any means,” Jaime snorts.

He felt more than tempted to just throw away the hilt and make a new one, but sadly, beneath the overgrip in worn yellow, resides a fine Stormlandish hilt from just that period, with a rain guard with a rich engraving resembling a stag’s head. So Jaime will have to keep scrubbing away the overgrip to bring that wonderful sword back to life.

“But I am sure you’ll make it worth it. I really liked the last one you did. She was beautiful.”

“Yeah, she was one of a kind. Got a lot of attention on that _fabulous_ blog of mine.”

“I saw the pictures,” Brienne agrees, nodding her head.

“I can send you more if you liked?” he offers.

_If someone is entitled to well illuminated pictures, then it is your wedded wife, no?_

Brienne studies him for a longer moment.

Perhaps there is no rush in their lives as of late, but looking at him now, she suddenly feels a rush inside her that makes Brienne certain that it’s time to move, move forward.

“… Or I could come by and you show me,” she suggests with that wonderful easy smile that makes Jaime forget about the world forgetting itself.

“Brienne, you know you don’t have to…,” he argues.

Jaime knows it’s strenuous to come, and he doesn’t want his wife to feel like she has to come and coddle him just because he is feeling the Blues of Time.

Needless to mention that there is still his _art project_.

“If the lion won’t come to the North… the lady knight has to move down South, you know how the… _old saying_ goes.”

Perhaps no old saying, but the kind of constant reversal that always works between them. The lion comes for the lady knight. The lady knight comes for the lion.

They always chase each other.

They always find each other.

“You just want to make sure that I don’t cause any trouble,” he snorts.

“That has been my job for how long now?”

“Oh please, who jumped into the bearpit to save you? Who shouted out to Locke and his men? Who…,” he recounts, but she interrupts him, “That you always have to bring that up.”

“It can’t harm to remind you every now and then when you think that you are the only one whose job it is to make sure the other doesn’t cause any trouble. Or do I have to remind you of that adventure at the Eyrie fifty years ago?”

“Oh please, that was not my fault.”

“Still, your beloved husband had to come and save the day,” Jaime argues.

“You didn’t save the day, I just asked you to come,” Brienne insists.

_And so he did._

“Still, I’d insist that we both try to keep each other out of trouble.”

“Or we drag each other right back in,” she snorts.

“Might be,” he laughs. “Likely is.”

“You know I am right… But you owe me for this. Flights down south are always such a drag.”

Maybe that will get them out of the blues.

Maybe Jaime has the rights of it, and it’s time to move to the warmer regions.

Maybe she should pick up the sword again, if only to peel off overgrips.

Or she could start a new clinic.

A new self defense class.

A law office.

Do more charity work again.

She could give sword fighting classes like she used to many times already. Those were high on demand when it was so very _en vogue_ for the teenagers who wanted to join drama clubs or aimed towards becoming professional actors and actresses.  

_Or maybe another degree?_

She hasn’t attended classes at _King’s Landing University_ for over a hundred years.

_Maybe it’s time?_

And even if not, Brienne can feel it deep within her that it is time that she sees him again.

Un-pixelated.

In the flesh.

In the same space and time.

“Brienne?” he asks, pulling the blonde woman out of her musings back to the look on her face that she cannot really read.

“Hm?”

“I love you, you know.”

“As I love you. Always,” she agrees, nodding her head.

Those are the words you don’t have to write in a letter.

They gain so much more gravitas, so much more meaning, once they travel past the lips.

Because there is no hiding once you have to say it.

No way of denying that this is the one but simple truth.

She brushes her fingers over the camera, offering a soft smile.

The one constant of life.

_Love._

Even of a life that just goes on and on and on.

Their love lives on along with them.

_Always. And doesn’t that have a nice ring to it?_

“I will catch the next best flight,” she goes on to say.

“There is no rush,” he argues.

“I just want to see you. So you better make sure that the place is not as much a mess when I arrive,” Brienne says with growing resolution as small futures grow inside her mind. “Oh, and you should get yourself something to drink.”

“As should you.”

“After I made my phone calls. I tend to be less talkative after a sip. But you should go ahead. You look like you didn’t have some in a while.”

Jaime takes out one of the vials with blue liquid and wriggles it at the screen. “Well, here is to you, my love.”

“I’ll be with you as soon as I can. Until then.”

“Until then.”

“I love you.”

“I love you.”

The screen fades to black.

Jaime sighs, leaning his head back before draining the vial. His eyes open, now the brightest shade of blue and he feels like drifting away from time itself, all the zombies, until nothing remains but her voice in his ears.

The sweetest song.

The song of the world.

_Always._

* * *

 

Brienne sighs as she puts the phone aside.

Something is wrong with him, she is sure of it. Jaime has had those mood swings over the last one hundred years. He always had a leaning towards melancholy every now and then, but as of late, it was especially bad. That was also why she was the one who proposed to him to move to King's Landing. The swords gave him a purpose. And when you live such a long life, finding new purposes is an essential component to keep you going. 

She hoped that the time in the capital, reviving the old swords, would revive that spark of life in him that inspired her more than once to keep going when she felt like giving up. She wanted him to be happy again, but now it appears as though it only got worse.

Sometimes, when she sees his pixelated image swimming up on her screen, Brienne sees flashes of the man who had his hand cut off with a rusty Arakh, who wanted to…

_Die._

And that even though that is one of those things they curiously let go of, back during the Long Night.

Eternity in exchange for a heroic death.

The human race in exchange for sweet sleep, coming at the end of one’s own time.

Earth’s time in exchange for the termination of one’s own.

An endless beach, where their footsteps are being swallowed by the tide over and over, erasing memories, fading them away until only faint outlines remain.

Brienne swallows thickly, shaking her head.

_Now is not the time._

As it appears, there is a rush now.

She sits up on bed, opens the drawer on her nightstand to retrieve her address book in worn brown leather and crumpled pages.

For someone who never thought she had actual friends in this world, Brienne can now proudly announce that she wrote down many names over the years, of friends, some of which passed away, sure, but who remained not just in her memory, but also in her little notebooks, stuck between the pages, contained between worn leather, preserved for many years still to come.

Brienne turns the pages until she has the right one, leaves her finger on the line in question as she picks up the phone with her other hand, dials, waits.

“Hello? I would like to book a flight from Winterfell to King’s Landing as soon as possible… yes. What routes are available? Mhm. Then I would like to book a flight going from Winterfell over the Eyrie to King’s Landing. Tomorrow evening is the earliest? Yes, then I will take that one… Only carry-on luggage… Window seat if possible… Wonderful. Thank you… The name is Gale of Morne…”

As it appears, it's time to find the lion anew.


	3. The Shades of Longing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime gets a delivery. 
> 
> Brienne goes to talk to Davos about her upcoming trip down South.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone, thanks for sticking around, for kudoing and commenting! ♥♥♥
> 
> I know there is still confusion about what the issue with the good stuff is - but... I am trying to uncover this bit by bit instead of just giving a big exposition. To me, it just flows better like that. So... bear with me, pretty please!!! ☺
> 
> Also... I suck at poems, so for that thing I inserted there - please bear with me on that one as well! 
> 
> In any case, I hope you'll enjoy this chapter as well - and once again, I can only recommend you to watch that movie, it's fab! 
> 
> Much love! ♥♥♥

_Ding-dong._

Jaime sighs as he lies on his couch. He has to get a new doorbell. _Not really_ , but this one starts to annoy him.

Not that it’d be of much use, considering his latest order.

But annoyance tends to override common sense most of the time, so Jaime learned over the course of his long, long life.

“Oh, right, the door,” he reminds himself, getting up with a grunt. Jaime walks up to the door barefooted, his house coat only loosely closed, to open the door with a creaking sound.

And in strides Peck in his usual slightly awkward way.

Jaime long since gave up on trying to tell him that it’s impolite to enter people’s houses without being led inside.

_No one gives a fuck on guest rights these days, and back in the day, that is what brought about big trouble._

Red Weddings.

The creation of the White Walkers.

You know, the _small_ evils of humankind.

_But oh well, forgetting. It’s always about forgetting. We long since knew that, right?_

Close your eyes, then maybe the monsters before you will disappear once you open them again. Just that the monsters stay, no matter how much you squint, no matter how hard you wish them away. You just give them more time to rip your head off.

Brienne has the rights of it – they should still teach combat at the schools in his humble opinion, or at least properly prepare the children for what is out there, instead of painting everything in gay, bright colors and make of an army of the undead something far less threatening.

“Hey, man, I hope it's alright that I just came by without calling you beforehand, but I just wanted to give it to you as soon as I got it. For your art project.”

_Oh, right, the **art** project. _

He almost forgot over phone calls and pixelated smiles flashing across his computer.

Peck holds out a dragonglass dagger to him, and Jaime can feel a strange sort of electricity running through him, settling deep in the pit of his stomach.

A call from the earlier days.

When death and life were caught up in much stricter dichotomies.

And much stricter time frames.

“My guy said that it’s the best he could find. It’s extra sharp, he told me. And I can confirm, man. Almost cut myself on it as I wrapped it. Oh, he’s also said that you can make candles out of that stuff. And that you could use it to kill those mythical ice zombies with it. Imagine that!”

 _Mythical_ – is that supposed to be a pseudonym for “unreal” again?

Because the scars Brienne and he received thanks to them are by no means “unreal,” Jaime can trace them with his fingertips, did numerous times, memorized them, over and over, lying next to her, holding her close.

“Both are true,” Jaime mumbles, glancing at the onyx dagger in his hand. “Thank you, Peck. That is… perfect.”

For a moment, Jaime almost forgot – even if that is exactly what he keeps blaming the zombies for, he is aware. After Brienne’s phone call and the promise of her coming to see him, onyx faded from his world, only to come back in the shape of the dagger he ordered.

“No problem, man,” Peck replies, beaming at him.

“You know, for a zombie, you are alright,” Jaime says, eyes fixe on the blade that reflects only blurry images in the dark glass.

“Thanks.”

“Please,” Jaime says, holding out a roll of bills out to him.

“What? No, that’s way too much. You already gave me so much for the…,” Peck means to say, but Jaime interrupts him, “I insist.”

“But you already helped me find that new apartment and…,” the young man stammers, but Jaime cuts him off once more, “Take it, Peck. It’s okay.”

“Really?”

“ _Peck_.”

The young man takes the bills and stuffs them into his chest pocket, tapping against the jacket a few times as though to reassure himself that the money is real.

_And not just something **mythical** , huh? _

“Thank you, Jaime. Uhm. Is there anything else I can do for you? Man, you know that I will do whatever is within my powers.”

“People have been pissing on my moon vines again,” Jaime says bluntly, his eyes drifting over to the window while his hand is busy feeling the weight of onyx in his hand.

_The weight of death._

“Still? Man, that’s crazy.” Peck shakes his head.

“Tell me about it,” Jaime snorts.

Just like the rest of the world.

Crazy. Insane. Mad.

Chasing its own destruction instead of running from it.

_Let's all clap our hands for the progress of human society, heading right towards the next abyss - but faster each time!_

“Well, uhm… Oh, I have an idea. Maybe I can convince them that you moved or something? Further uptown or so. That’s where a lot of artists live. I’ll spread it on the forums if you want me to,” Peck suggests.

“Just take care of it the best you can,” Jaime agrees, nodding his head ever so slowly.

“I’ll sure as hell try, man.”

“Look, Peck, I have some urgent businesses to attend. I’ll talk to you later, alright?” Jaime says, making up his mind.

He needs to be alone, _right now_.

“Yeah, uhm, sure, man. Whenever you got the time,” Peck says uncertainly. Jaime starts to walk to the door, moving the lad forward with his mere presence.

One of the few good things that remained from his Lannister heritage.

This presence to induce fear.

The presence to move people.

The presence that once helped move a man with trouts for a banner so he would surrender the castle without further bloodshed.

_Or to move people over to the door, for the matter._

“Thank you another time for the dagger,” Jaime says, not bothering to look at Peck.

“I’ll see about the lurkers another time,” the young man tells him.

“Thank you.”

“Bye,” Peck replies, waving, but Jaime closes the door without another word.

And so he is alone again, tangled up the faint promise of an ending to a story so very long.

Jaime glances back down at the dagger, takes it into his hand, feels the weight.

His fists clench and unclench around the handle as he twists it around a bit, only to hear the softest of chimes, the call bac, dangling around his neck, containing the image of her.

_Her._

“Feels heavier now.”

* * *

 

“Lady Brienne? Two visits in such a short amount of time? I feel honored,” Davos laughs as he sits down at his study, glancing at as the blonde woman walks inside, closing the door behind her with a thud. “Come and have a seat.”

“Thank you.” Brienne sits down on the other free chair, offering a small smile.

“What brings you here?”

“My feet?”

“Who could have guessed?” he laughs lightly. “But now in all sincerity.”

“I just wanted to let you know personally that I will be gone for some time. I don't know for how long exactly, though,” Brienne goes on to explain.

She heard the call, and Brienne knows she has to answer it. She always has to answer it.

“You’ve always been wandering around, huh?” Davos chuckles. “A restless soul whose feet keep carrying her around and around, on and on and on…”

That may be a way too true assessment, Brienne has to admit to herself. She is much more at ease with herself, her life, who she is and who she was, what she lost and gained, who she lost and gained as friends, as family. However, there is still something that keeps driving Brienne, something that keeps her feet restless, a longing for a place she doesn’t know, a longing for a time that wasn’t yet.

A longing without direction.

_And perhaps also without purpose, upon reflection. Though only time will show._

“Whenever life forced me to.” Brienne shrugs her broad shoulders. “But you as a smuggler, knight, Hand, Maester, poet… you have been on an endless journey the same way, have you not?”

She looks at him with a frown when there is no reply. “Davos?”

“Hm? Oh, sorry, I drifted away for a second,” he laughs softly, a little embarrassed.

“You were miles away,” she chuckles. He does that more often these days. He goes away inside, to a place that only he can go to.

“True,” Davos admits, sniggering.

“To where did you go?”

“A prison cell at Dragonstone,” he sighs with a sad smile. “For some reading lessons.”

“Shireen.”

The name lingers in the air for a long moment.

Brienne has heard that story before, many times by now.

And while she has never known that young girl with a heart of summer, Brienne can well understand that Davos’ mind keeps travelling her way.

We long for the things we don’t have.

Can’t have.

We always long most for those out of our reach.

Those far away.

Those gone.

Life is an endless tale of growing longing.

“There are those moments when I wished we had been born into a later time,” Davos exhales, running his calloused fingertips over the papers on his desk.

“Haven’t we all? Who wanted to bother with Greyscale, the Long Night, struggling out of chainmails, rotting teeth due to a lack of proper toothbrushes, and emptying chamber pots?” Brienne snorts.

While she misses many times from the older times, Brienne also tends to see the vast array of advantages that came with the so-called modern ages. Proper means of hygiene, health care, prosthetics, education, and inventions such as TV, radio, and popcorn are things she learned to appreciate a whole lot by now.

“That of course, but I mean… there are those moments when I wished I had something like _this_ by the time I last saw her,” Davos says, turning a picture frame to her, showing Gilly, Sam, and Little Sam posing with him. It’s a photo that was taken during their vacation at the Citadel. They wanted to be there when Davos received his award. There are many pictures on his desk now, some even with Brienne and Jaime.

_Which is rare enough._

Brienne is camera-shy, and Jaime, despite his innate arrogance about his undoubtedly good looks, doesn’t really care about having his picture taken. He used to say often enough that one of the scourges of mankind is and will forever be the selfie stick – so long you don’t use it to indulge in mock sword fights with them.

“I found out that holding on to those pictures is like preserving the images when your memories start fading. There are days when I don't even remember her sweet smile, the braids in her hair, the sound of her voice as she read to me… I get older, even if I don’t age, and the memories keep slipping away from me. And there is no one who can keep them in my stead,” Davos says, his voice quivering towards the end. “I am the only one who remained who even knew her as a person… Sam’s known her, that’s true enough, but… I daresay he didn’t know her the way I did. So the way _I_ remember her… it keeps slipping away.”

Some wounds just never heal, no matter how many lives you spend on the planet, rubbing the ointment of good company, friendship, and reveling in the past into the skin.

“As you say: Sam remembers her personally. You shared her stories with him, too. So he won’t forget. He never forgets anything, except for appointments… and… _I_ won’t forget the stories you told, and the stories you have written. Your words are read in the schools now, my friend. She lives on, if only in an echo of your written lines, but she does live on,” Brienne argues, reaching across the table to give his hand a gentle squeeze.

“A picture would be nice, still,” Davos sighs with a sad smile, squeezing back once.

“Yeah,” she agrees.

Brienne knows that she is fortunate enough that she and Jaime both share this long life together, so they have those memorabilias to hold on to when memories start fading and blurring.

His picture is always close to her heart, ever since she got it, just like he wears a photo of her close to his.

_In the sight of the Seven, I hereby seal these two souls, binding them as one, for eternity._

Brienne found it very sweet of Jaime that he actually kept the ribbon with which they sealed their promise in the eyes of the Old Gods and the New to make the matching medallions out of it.

 _That way, there will be no distance between us, even if there is, think about it_ , Jaime told her as he presented the gift to her what seems like a small eternity ago by now. Brienne only remembers that she pulled him close and that the kiss felt just like on the day they got wed, even though it had been years, many years later.

Time may scratch at memories, but not at love, so long you don’t allow it.

“Sometimes I wonder what she’d think of me now,” Davos says, running his fingers over some scribbled pages, full of attempts of writing another poem, another ode, another song left unsung.

“A published poet who even won the _Citadel Award_? I think Shireen would be very proud of you.”

“Not bad for a man who couldn’t read until this girl taught this stubborn, mulish man the words,” Davos laughs. “In a prison cell no less.”

“Most definitely not. How did it go again?

 _Kindness, it's a thing not written on the skin._  
_Kindness, it’s a thing often left unseen._  
 _It doesn’t hide in the pigment, the creases of the face._  
 _It lives within a smile, a smile far too short._  
 _Swept away by gods, ambition, pride, a futile chase._  
 _A worthless kind of resort._

  
_For it ends, and doesn’t begin_   
_To grasp, to fathom what love can bring._   
_It goes on in the dance of a graceful doe,_   
_Carved out of wood, a meager gift to bestow._   
_For as long as mine own heart beats,_   
_She shall dance on in distant memories._

  
_Kindness, it’s a thing writ off by time itself._   
_Forgotten on pyres,_   
_Swept away by fires,_   
_Dancing on and dancing away,_   
_To another life, a better day._   
_Forgetting it, it’s a flame, an echo, endless blindness._

I always loved that ever since I read the first drafts.”

“Now you are flattering me,” he laughs, amused.

“You know that this is not my kind of game. For that, I am way too straightforward,” Brienne argues. “I don’t flatter my own husband, no matter his lament. So rest assured that I won’t start on you now.”

“True again… but enough of my moping. We have way too much of it these days. Your own husband and his brother seem to be in yet another midlife crisis despite the fact that they should have moved past that by now. I mean, chasing dragons? That dwarf is no better than that lucky fool you took the oath with,” Davos snorts, to which Brienne can only chuckle in agreement.

She can still remember how upset Jaime was when Tyrion announced that he was going to live in Essos for a while in chase of some dragons in Old Valyria. The brothers regrew their band of trust over the many years that followed the Long Night and put their disputes to rest, to make space for a new kind of brotherhood and friendship to blossom between them as the first buds broke through the snow and ice of Winter. And deep down, Jaime always, even when he truly hated Tyrion for killing Tywin and leaving the Lannister family in the miserable position they were in after his demise, cared for his little brother, swore to protect him even when he damned his name and swore that he wanted him dead.

Because apparently, the promises of protection hold much greater power than promises of hatred and killing, promises of revenge.

Therefore, it was particularly hard for Jaime to let his little brother go to Valyria. Tyrion went with an entire team of people to help him in his chase for the lost treasures still hidden on the other shore across the Narrow Sea, even if none of the people he knows from his first life. He went off with enough good stuff in tow to suffice for two lives. And Tyrion even calls often enough, though also at the most inconvenient of times – one time while Brienne and Jaime were right at _it_ , which resulted in a very loud if short lecture by the older Lannister brother, after all “one does not interrupt the lion during his feast.” Nevertheless, Jaime admitted to Brienne often enough that despite all of those security measurements, he was worried about the younger man.

“I lost him once, I don't want to lose him yet again because the imp decides to get lost in friggin’ Essos. Who even wants to be there?” he always lamented. “And who would want to revive the dragons? The three we got to meet caused a good amount of trouble before they proved themselves useful.”

But Tyrion could not be convinced – he was and apparently still is steadfast in his wish to chase the ancient creatures.

“Maybe someone forgot one or two eggs in a crevice or a cave? The small dwarf I am, I might be lucky enough to fit into one of those holes to bring them back to light!” Tyrion had told them as they bid him farewell by the airport.

Though to Brienne’s understanding, Tyrion’s chase for dragons is just a different shade of what they all do: Chasing the old times, the former days that start fading away as memories blur and become milky by the edges.

Jaime has his swords.

Davos has his stories.

Sam has his books.

And she has her music.

In the end, they all long for the same thing, just in different ways.

“In any case… I know I don’t have to tell you this, because we both know you can defend yourself far better than most, but… Promise me this, Lady Brienne: That you will be careful once you make your way down South. I couldn’t bear it if… if something happened to you,” Davos tells her, now with a lot more sincerity in his voice, covering her hand with his fingerless hand.

He never bothered about prosthetics.

“Nothing will happen to me, what are you saying?” she argues, shaking her head.

They have all lived in King’s Landing. Even after the Long Night. Multiple times.

_We even sat the Iron Throne and climbed off of it alive – well, not that people knew, but still._

“I thought that about Shireen, too.”

“I am not Shireen.”

“I know.”

Brienne reaches across the table with her free hand to pat the back of his. “I will be safe. I’ll just go ahead to see him. The capital is no longer the dangerous place it was by the time… well, a Mad King raged, by the time a King’s Mad Son raged, or a King’s Mad Son’s Mad Mother raged… There is nothing I have to fear, other than heatstroke, now that I have spent such a long time here in the North.”

“You shouldn’t listen to an old man. I suppose I am just growing paranoid on my old days,” Davos sighs.

“I will bring you a souvenir if you liked?” she suggests.

“Oh, don't bother. During my merchant days…,” he replies, but she interrupts him with a grin, “Smuggler.”

“I was a merchant.”

“ _Right_.”

“ _In any case_ , back during those times, I have brought all kinds of souvenirs back from my journeys. They change in shape, but the spirit alters not. It’s a faint echo of where we have been. I’d rather have you be safe, a promise of your return, hm? _That_ is my greatest souvenir.”

Brienne smiles at him.

Who could have guessed that such a friendship could grow between them after where they started off?

However, that is one of the things Brienne learned over the course of time: Stories never begin where they end and they don’t end where they begin.

And she is more than glad that destiny swept her this direction from where she left off. Brienne wouldn’t want to miss such a close friendship ever again, which grew to be one of the things to keep her going when her longing for her husband grew almost unbearable ever since she bid him farewell with a kiss and the demand of a promise that he will be safe and not do anything stupid.

“You know I have to go,” Brienne tells him.

Jaime needs her.

And she needs him.

_I am yours. And your are mine._

_You are mine. And I am yours._

_Till the day I die._

_… Which seems surprisingly close to always these days._

One of the few things that has always been at balance, Brienne realized over the years. There are times when Jaime needed her support more, but there were other times when she needed his strong embrace, hushed promises of a future still unknown, no matter how much time passed between them already.

They simply need each other.

"Yes I know, as you continuously prove with your longing glances," he snorts.

"I try my best not to," she huffs, if amused.

"Needless to mention that you have to go to make sure he doesn't end up doing something stupid again. Lannisters tend to attract trouble," Davos goes on. "Look at his brother! That small man caused and attracted more trouble than most people I got to know, and let me tell you, I made the acquaintance of a lot of troublemakers."

"Well, since I am Jaime's wife, I am also partly Lannister, so I assume that explains why I tend to attract a lot of trouble of my own. What excuse do you have?" she chuckles.

"I am surrounded by Lannisters - so it only makes sense that I get dragged into your troubles and quarrels."

"Aw, you poor soul, having to put up with all that," she jokes.

"I wouldn't want to have it any other way," he argues, winking at her.

"That is good to know."

“Sometimes I don’t get you two, though. Or rather, I don’t get you at all. Your relationship was always one of a kind, we all knew that, but… But what I understand even less is that you two even bother living apart in the first place. You can’t bear without the other. That is one of the things those many years of life have shown. Where is the point in him moping in the South while you think about him in worry up in the North?”

Brienne asked herself that question some many times when she encouraged Jaime to move to King's Landing.

 _Why do I tell him to go when I want him to stay_? she asked herself so many times that the words she spoke inside her mind rang as one deep voice. However, for some reason she cannot pinpoint, the small voice she heard that said "let him," drowned even the loudest shout screaming at her to make him stay.

In the end, when she brought him to the airport, Brienne was surprisingly certain of her decision.

Only now does she really start to question it because it seems like the small voice may have been lying to her.

_The little minx._

“Relationships lasting that long tend to get… _not_ less difficult over time, I assume, quite on the contrary,” Brienne tells him with a sigh."I mean... you tell me, there are dozens of relationship guidebooks for the seven-year itch, but for the seven hundred-year itch? Not so much. How do you make a relationship last over hundreds of years? Through many lives? At some point I guess we can consider it a miracle that we didn't divorce five hundred times only to end up marrying again."

Because of that one thing Brienne is certain, they always end up finding each other, no matter the fight, no matter the odds.

"You still marry again over and over."

"But we don't divorce. We never did," Brienne insists.

"Something you can surely pride yourself with. Perhaps you should write that guidebook for how to overcome the seven hundred-year itch?" Davos suggests.

"I don't think there will be a particular market for that."

"True again."

Brienne leans her head back slightly. “It just keeps piling up and collapsing every now and then, with a relationship that long... You have to try your best to rebuild it, mend it… and sometimes... Just walk away for a while, to return. The advantage is that we always have that one base to build on: Trust.”

_You need trust to have a truce._

_I trust you._

“Which is rare enough.”

“True.”

She let Jaime go South in the hope that this would make him happy again, after he seemed so very tired in the North, not doing much of anything beside browsing information on ancient swords online, working out, fulfilling the marital duties and privileges with _absolute_ enthusiasm and conscientiousness, and loving her.

Brienne sees no issue in having him some other place. She trusts him completely. He can handle himself, he did before.

But now it seems as though Jaime only fell deeper, and Brienne just has to make sure that she makes it in time to catch him, like he caught her so many times.

“Well, so anyway, give my regards to that suicidally romantic scoundrel. Even if the Lannisters normally claim that only they send their regards, hm?” Davos says, pulling Brienne out of her thoughts, away from Jaime, back to Winterfell.

“Do you think he is… _that_?” Brienne asks, biting her lower lip.

Her thoughts danced over that option a lot ever since that video chat, and Brienne tries her best to escape that embrace, that rhythm, that beat.

“A scoundrel? Yes, most definitely. He is one of those guys… quite literally… you cannot get killed. Stubborn till the end.”

“No, I mean…” She stops. He sighs.

“One can never know. He seems to be the type, but how would I tell?” Davos shrugs.

“Well, let’s hope he is only just romantic, then,” Brienne mutters, not meeting the older man’s gaze.

“All is going to change once he sees you. It always does,” he assures her.

“How would you know?” She frowns, to which Davos laughs low in his throat. “My dear Lady Brienne, anyone who knows you two… knows _that_. There is a way he looks at you that I only know from the old tales. The spark of hope. An echo of the past reaching into the future.”

“How poetic,” she snorts, amused.

_Blue is a good color on you, my lady. It goes well with your eyes._

As Jaime keeps saying whenever she wears something of that color.

“I have my moments,” Davos chuckles.

“You should write that down,” Brienne says, nodding at the papers.

“Maybe I should. Perhaps another award is in for me, who knows?” he laughs. “I haven’t written about you two yet.”

“Make sure not to give away the names.”

“You know I never mention names. But yes, maybe you need a text written for your curious love story. I suppose it’s one long since overdue being told.”

“Only the future will show who’d want to read it.”

* * *

 

Jaime holds the dagger in his prosthetic hand, runs the fingers of his left along the scars on his chest, from when they were busy defeating White Walkers and Others and the other Others, the evil born out of ice.

When they saved the world at the cost of the few, to save the many, because apparently, there are still enough humans to make it way too many tummies to fill, too many children to provide for.

They all shed their blood on those grounds, so many hundred years ago by now.

_And what for?_

Pollution?

Wars across the Narrow Sea, where the Free Cities no longer argue about slavery the Mother of Dragons infamously, _supposedly_ , freed them of, only to have now quarrels about people being paid little to nothing for hard labor because of corrupt governments?

The ongoing exploitation of the earth?

The mass production of plastic toys and technical devices that enjoy way too much status these days?

Military operations against some Dornish self-proclaimed freedom fighters who have a whole lot of Ellaria Sand and her daughters back in the day?

Young children being taught that the Long Night was not at all a fight against the dead but only a _myth_?

Scientists trying to revive what they killed?

A sword blog?

Is that supposed to be worth the price they paid?

Is that what they fought for?

Jaime can still remember the many times Brienne wept in all secret, so not to show her tears to him, when it dawned on her anew that their friends kept passing while they just moved on.

He can still remember how often he held her when Brienne believed she could hide away her tears, both feeling the weight of the world beating in their hearts, forever dependent on the good stuff, the vials that keep them from becoming that which they fought, keeping the weapons blunt that once were so sharp that they threatened to cut through the world during the Long Night.

It’s not like Jaime would be the first one to do it.

The Mother of Dragons went a considerably short while after that unspoken, let’s say, _treaty_ was made. She couldn’t bear it in her heart that she lost all of her dragons in the fight against the Others. As though life itself had betrayed her one last time, she always said.

Jaime and Brienne only learned of her demise very late. She had returned to Essos, stating that her home was never Westeros in the first place. Tyrion told them that, after a few more years of rule, Daenerys Targaryn left Meereen to travel to Braavos. The Mother of Dragons lived for some time there, in a small house that she used to live in during her childhood, or so she wrote in one of her letters to her former Hand.

_A house with a red door._

And that is where she chose to take her part of the burden with her.

Daenerys Targaryen took her bit of eternity, the everlasting ice that once kept alive the Night’s King and his men.

Just like that.

In all silence.

It should be just that easy, shouldn’t it?

Just one thrust.

One push.

And it’d be over.

Everything would simply be … over.

All the zombies stepping on Jaime’s moon flowers… away.

All the longing for different times, different places, the same places at different times, the same times at different places… gone.

All the longing for her while feeling like a ball of lead, dragging Brienne down… vanished.

All the memories that feel like they are too much for a single human being, well, however human now, to contain, to store, to hold up, use… faded away.

Jaime’s fingers tighten around the medallion dangling around his neck.

The image of her.

The image of her smile, the smile she has only for him.

The one thing that never fades away.

Never vanishes.

Never goes away.

Is never over.

Brienne is the one thing that makes eternity a worthwhile concept.

_A very pleasant concept of eternity, no less._

Because the fact that she goes on, that she keeps being a part of this world that they made such sacrifices for, is the one comfort beside her very being that Jaime learned to hold dear over the years and centuries.

Jaime sighs, lowering the obsidian in his hand.

It feels impossibly heavier now.

_Seemingly, it’s not that easy._

He puts the dagger back into the wooden chest, closes the lid with a thud to push it under the bed again, only to find his hand going back to the medallion dangling around his neck, feeling the small weight that makes him feel lighter with every intake of air.

Jaime leans back on the sheets, letting out a shaky breath as he feels the cotton move and shift beneath him.  

He closes his eyes, his fingers still enclosing the medallion.

_I’ll dream of you._


	4. Coming Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brienne arrives in King's Landing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone, thanks for sticking around, kudoing and commenting, and all those things that make me as a writer so very happy! ♥♥♥
> 
> Anyway, I know some of you guys are still thinking about what the good stuff shenanigan is supposed to be about, but just to be sure, the fact that I delay it is not meant to blow this issue up out of proportion. It's just some explanation so that I don't have to go with a vampire narrative, basically. No great mystery whatsoever beyond that. Nevertheless, I hope the explanation will be satisfactoy once the puzzle pieces click into place. ☺
> 
> I hope you'll enjoy this chapter! 
> 
> Much love! ♥♥♥

Returning to a place you haven’t been to in a long time is an odd experience.

It has something uncanny about it, something you cannot grasp.

Familiar while strange.

Strange while familiar.

Some things changed.

Some things still the same.

The taxis in King’s Landing still have the same color – _and smell, apparently_ – but the people now wear different clothes depending on what is _en vogue_ according to the current _Margaery Claire_. Some of the old houses she remembers are gone now, replaced, removed, far away when they were so incredibly close once, as she and Jaime walked past them on their way back home.

As though they never existed, despite the fact that Brienne knows that they were there once.

The noises are different, too. Fewer pedestrians. More cars. More honking, screaming of the brakes, people shouting and bitching at the slow traffic, speeding up once the green light finally comes. Always in a hurry, always in a rush. 

The Song of Modernity.

The Song of the New Age.

The Song of a new epoch approaching at fast strides, outrunning time itself every once in a while, only to fall back behind.

Brienne can still remember the days when there were only the sounds of horse hooves on the pavement, or the creaking, shrieking sound of the carriages’ wooden wheels fading away in the distance as the horses trotted past them.

There are fewer shouts and gleeful screams of children playing out in the street, too, just like there are less children visible out in the alleys the same way.

Brienne loved that most. When they lived in King’s Landing some four hundred years ago, she had any opportunity to enjoy that occurrence almost on a daily basis, back when it was not uncanny yet - and Brienne relished the melody that came from that apparent dissonance of voices, screams, and shouts, those interludes singing the Song of Life.

They had a small apartment uptown back during that life – and Brienne must say, she fancied it much, even if she could have done without the stupid girdles so _en vogue_ by the time. Though Jaime always told her that she didn't have to wear it. To this day he means it when he says that Brienne could walk around in chainmail and armor, and he'd beat anyone who'd dare to call her upon it. Brienne didn't mind too much. At some point it was almost thrilling, to reinvent herself with a new hat with broad brim and rich feather decoration, a new brooch with sapphires, or with emeralds and rubies - she never knew where Jaime got them for her, his _little secret_ , he always said.

They were a married couple of the upper middleclass, back then. Brienne tutored children and adults alike in the arts of the classical instruments, ranging from harp, flute, violin, to piano, oboe, and zither. Jaime taught as a history teacher at school – after all, they should be able to tell just what went on the past hundreds of years.

It was a calm sort of life, without much noise, safe for the music that echoed through the apartment whenever Brienne or her pupils brought the instruments either to sing and sigh or shriek in agony, because not all of her students were talented.

_Some were quite miserable, actually._

The jobs were more of a distraction for her and Jaime – they never did it for the money, really. Other than that, they enjoyed the calmness of the neighborhood, taking the horse carriage down the Street of Steel on the weekends, sipping coffee out of fine china in one of the cafés at every corner, walking down familiar paths, mapping a city they once knew, hand in hand, trying to find the secret architecture that was lost over hundreds of years.

The best were the lazy Sunday mornings, though, reading from the same newspaper, huddled up to one another on their settee, back when the ink was still pressed into the paper with much more antiquated machines than nowadays, and you always had black or gray fingertips once you were done reading.

Brienne can still recall the smell of hard-boiled eggs, freshly baked bread rolls, jam, and printer’s ink, mingled with Jaime’s cologne as she leaned her head against his shoulder, reading along, and oftentimes being bound to wait until he finished with the page.

_He always takes forever. Yet again one of those constants that never seem to change._

The apartment had the most wonderful oriel she’s ever known. Brienne can still remember it in all detail, as though it was right before her. How the light filtered through the glass in such a way that for a few hours every day, the windows reflected rainbows right onto the floor, the cushions, her clothes, her skin, the pages of her book, painting them in all colors of the spectrum.

And so, as Brienne sat there in her armchair, devouring novel after novel once her pupils were all gone, she would watch the children playing outside. She would listen their shouts and cries of joy, the bounce of the leather balls they kept kicking and throwing around – without the car noises destroying that curious harmony. And while it way too often reminded Brienne of what she and Jaime gave up on back during the Long Night, she took a perhaps _uncanny_ joy in watching the children play.

That sound alone made it a bit more worth what they did and what they sacrificed.

_But these days?_

That sound has faded to the private, as it appears, to the inside of children’s rooms, parks, and playgrounds. It’s no longer up for grabs in the streets, or available from an oriel on the second floor.

Way too often Brienne hears people tell young parents to see to it that their children make no sound, that they are too loud, too lively, too active. Brienne never really minds to hear that song, even if it is anything but harmonious. It happened yet again when she was going through the routines of boarding to catch her flight to King's Landing, to Jaime. While Brienne perfectly understands people's annoyance about the shouts and screams - how would they know the worth of those little songs? - she was frustrated that the children had to fall silent. That was the only thing that was slightly entertaining about the boarding.

However, that is the way it goes, as it appears, voices fade in, voices fade out, songs are lost and found.

And Brienne still has to find her way back into that melody, has to familiarize herself with that new song.

However, all of that uncanniness she felt when she climbed into the taxi after that drag of a flight from Winterfell to here started to blur the moment on Brienne reminded herself that she isn’t just returning to a place she once knew, a place that was their home some many times over the years, but to a person.

_To him._

Jaime always makes her forget about the world.

Her most wonderful distraction – _always_.

“We are there, ma’am,” the taxi driver’s voice rings out, yanking Brienne away from the small oriel colored in rainbows where she had Jaime so many times walk up to her for a chaste kiss tasting of all colors of the spectrum, back to the reality of the taxi having come to a halt in a street downtown Brienne can’t remember at all. She steals a quick glance at the small screen displaying the price for the ride as she takes out her purse to fish out the stag bills needed.

_That is truly one of the advantages of the modern age – that you no longer have to carry around your bag full of heavy coins._

“Here you go,” Brienne says as she holds out the bills to the man, who takes them with a smile. “The rest is for you.”

She always makes sure to give a nice tip. If there is one thing Brienne doesn’t have to worry about, then it is money. So why would she become stingy these days? And even if they were to run any financial trouble ever, which Brienne highly doubts – thanks to Tyrion always having made sure that all are well provided for - they can always sell some of their belongings from the former days to get some many for those precious artifacts.

 _Artifacts_.

For Brienne, that has always been a curious concept. To her, the things she sees displayed at historical museums often make her laugh, as though that spoon was suddenly awfully important, now that it was proclaimed an artifact of the former time. She once saw a spoon that was just like the one she still used daily to stir her coffee. It only dawned on Brienne at that moment as she glanced at the showcase that she was stirring her coffee with an artifact.

To Brienne, those things are… _things_ , memorabilias, perhaps, but not artifacts, relicts. Because she wouldn’t want to consider herself such a thing either.

_Though maybe Jaime and I are – and we just never got the memo, who knows?_

“Oh, wow, thanks,” the man says, looking at the bills in his hand.

Brienne gets out of the car after flashing him a brief smile, stretches out her limbs still aching from the tiny space in the aircraft while at the same time her arms and legs feel oddly numb. She glances at the house in front of her, dipped into the darkness of the approaching night.

She expected something else, to tell the truth. This seems unlike Jaime’s taste.

_Or standard, for the matter._

That man always had a fable for rich reds, golden swirls, a bit of splendor, _within boundaries_ , but this place looks like something that normally should make Jaime feel the invisible hand of Tywin Lannister smacking him in the back of the head for the effrontery of ever considering to reside in such a house despite his name.

_But oh well, how does it go? One should not judge a book by its cover, right?_

“Do you need help with the luggage, ma’am?” the taxi driver asks, leaning over the seat.

“No, thank you, I got it,” Brienne replies in a soft voice, before proceeding towards the trunk of the car to take out her bags.

It’s nice that these days, there is more of this artificial kindness to smudge on top of normalcy. Not that it’s anything real, Brienne is _more_ than aware of that, but it’s nice to be asked to have the bags carried instead of the silent scowls of judgment for looking the way you look, running around in chainmail instead of silky dresses.

A smile flashes across her face once she hears a door opening.

She doesn’t bother to turn her head over to the house just yet.

Because she already knows.

_I am home._

_I have returned._

_To him._

“It seems that my help has already arrived,” she says with a hum.

Walking down the front steps, his feet speeding up with every move, until Brienne can hear him standing behind her, until she can hear his breath travelling through the air, can feel the familiar heat his body radiates against her own.

Until she can feel his presence behind her.  

“My lady," Jaime breathes into her neck, and she can hear his smile, the smile that makes even the gravest trouble seem much smaller than it probably is. "May I?”

Brienne laughs, closing the trunk with a thud.

All uncanniness fades away at the familiarity she feels with him, and only just with him.

 _This is_ **_so_** _much better un-pixelated and without a distorted voice._

“You know, I can carry one of the bags at least,” she argues, turning to him, meeting his gaze, chasing it with her own eyes. “My lord.”

“What about the drag from the flight?” he laughs, granting her the smile that she has been longing for some many nights. He bends down to shoulder the big bag.

“What about the missing hand?” she snorts, glad to fall right back into their routine. As though they were never apart.  

“One-handed man jokes, _really_? That is _so_ below you, my darling,” he huffs, amused, taking the other bag with his prosthetic hand.

In contrast to Davos, Jaime learned about its merits some many years ago.

He kept the golden hand, and sometimes even wears it, to feel its familiar weight.

But most of the time, he either goes without, or with the artificial hand, and thanks to technological progress as of late, the prosthetics are getting better and better, copying movements well enough for him to have a chance to use it to create the swords so popular on his _oh so fabulous sword blog_.

“You said it, it was a drag. And it’s not like I have ever been the humorous type,” Brienne argues.

“You have your very own sense of humor.”

The one that only Jaime understands and learned to love - like the rest of her, the whole of her.

Brienne motions over to the sidewalk, Jaime carrying the bags after her.

“We got it all then, thanks,” she tells the taxi driver, who nods another time before driving off into the darkness flitting across the sky.

They motion over to the house, and Jaime leads her inside, making grandeur gestures that look ever the more ridiculous with the big bags wearing his arms down. Brienne closes the door behind them with a thud, chuckling softly.

And with another thud, Jaime drops the bags to the floor before seizing her lips, cups her jaw with his left hand, brings her closer to him, seizes the moment.

_Her. Always only her._

_You are mine and I am yours…_

A song as old as time itself.

The one thing that seems to have a taste of eternity.

An echo reaching not just back but forward.

A loophole in a universe trying to run away from itself.

“I missed you,” Brienne whispers against his lips, nostrils flaring, reassuring her, that _yes_ , she is home at last.

“I can feel that,” he hums with a wicked sort of grin, pulling her closer to him, mapping her with himself as he has done uncountable times.

“Mhm, but you want to show me around, since I haven’t seen the house yet, except for the few frames from the video chat, which were rare enough,” she argues with a grin, placing a kiss to the corner of his mouth, relishing the intimacy coming from those small moments, the small touches.

“To the bedroom?” He flashes her the most ridiculous of grins.

“No.”

Jaime rolls his eyes at her.

“C’mon, we can delay that whole showing around until later,” he insists, running his left hand down the hollow of her spine, inevitably bringing Brienne to shiver against his touch.

Those oh so little things that don’t keep changing, but for which Jaime could not be gladder.

Those are the promising kinds of constants, the good constants, oh so good constants.

The ones that make you feel at home.

The ones that make you feel like living.

“Or we might just as well delay _that_ until later,” she snorts, though her voice is betraying her with that way too telling sharp intake of air and the soft quiver towards the end.

“You can’t expect me not to want to take it to the bedroom after we finally see each other after how long now? I forgot. Time becomes such a mush once you have it in plenty. Plus, it’s not like the house is going to change in shape after I showed you properly just how much I missed you.”

“Or you might just as well show me around, since we have _so_ much time and because the bedroom isn’t going to run away or change in shape either. I have been aching to see your collection,” Brienne argues, pulling away to look at him, and Jaime finds himself caught in the familiar spell.

_She does have astonishing eyes._

_Eyes containing the world’s hope._

Jaime kisses down the side of her jaw, until his lips are right by her ear. “You can’t say _aching_ in that breathy sort of voice and talk about the swords on the wall instead of the one in my p…”

“Don't say it,” Brienne intervenes.

“ _Fine_. But I will say that I expect compensation for this,” Jaime grumbles, pulling away, though his fingers curl around hers loosely anyway.

_Sometimes you feel like newlyweds even when you are **oldlyweds** , really. If that were a word._

“Well?” she asks, giving his hand a gentle squeeze before pulling away to remove her jacket.

Jaime holds out his arm to her. “Just like back in the very old days, my lady.”

“I do miss that at times,” Brienne chuckles, interlinking her arm with his to allow him to guide her through the house that is not as uncanny as she feared it would be.

It smells of his cologne.

_Of him._

There are familiar photo frames on the table.

Some things they have kept over the years, stuff that would probably end up in a museum to be proclaimed an artifact.

And a bit of familiar Lannister gold and red after all.

_Nothing much uncanny, once you know that your loved one is the person occupying that space you do not know yet._

“These days, the zombie women can count themselves lucky if the zombie men look up from their smartphones long enough to actually look them in the face every once in a while,” Jaime huffs. “To this day, it’s a miracle to me that the human race didn’t die out yet thanks to the zombies forgetting the romance, the wooing – and copulation.”

 _What happened to that whole tradition of wooing_? he wonders at times. _Winning the woman? Sweeping her off her feet? Rescuing the maiden and carrying her to a better life? Though then again… I tried to kill her at first, and she tried to kill me, so maybe we aren’t the ones to judge foremost… But still._

“Maybe you just hang around the wrong people,” Brienne suggests.

“The wrong people keep around me, I can’t help that.”

“Yes, you could if only you tried. I told you from the very beginning that you should keep away from that Tom of Sevenstreams, to give but one example.”

_Talk about bad business deals resulting in having someone spy on one’s own enterprise._

Tyrion would have disapproved of that instantly, if her dear husband wasn’t as much of a bullhead, eager to figure it out on his own instead of asking the businessman par excellence for help.

“Oh, that whole Riverlands affair was _ages_ ago. Nothing escalated. He got what he deserved, him and his little zombie spies. That you always have to bring that up…,” he laments as they walk into a separate room. “So anyway, the collection my lady wife is _aching_ to see instead of answering the _aching_ need her lord husband has for said lady wife.”

“You will live.”

“I will live, as we both just continue to over and over – but will do so _achingly_. And under much protest."

“My poor husband,” she chortles.

“You can keep your faux coddling to yourself.”

Brienne kisses him on the mouth briefly, which has him humming against her lips almost instantly, the old spark never having died down by only just one bit.

“So you do coddling all of a sudden?” he chimes, amused.

“For my poor, aching husband? Of course. And now you will show me those swords, yes?”

“As my lady wife commands,” Jaime sighs in a sing-song.

“I don’t command, I ask politely,” Brienne argues.

“If my lady wife says so.”

They enter the room where Jaime hung up all the swords he already redid, all of them resting on padded racks with fine wooden planks decorated with engravings in the back, attached to the wall as though this was a museum.

Who would have guessed that the Kingslayer had that much artistic talent in him?

However, Brienne always knew that unknown talents lived beneath the snarky comments and faux smiles Jaime Lannister used to shield himself with before she somehow managed to get beneath his skin. That there is honor in him. That there is love for her in him, so much that to this day, Brienne cannot fully comprehend just how he loves her so.

Though Jaime the Smith was perhaps even more surprising than Jaime the King, and that was surely a turn of events that not many foresaw by the time he was only ever known as the Kingslayer, despised by all, judged by all, but unseen in his pain and sorrow until a bath in Harrenhal washed him of it.

“Beautiful,” Brienne says, smiling, walking closer, marveling at the art unfolding before her, the call from earlier times, things that deserve the title of artifacts, or rather _living_ artifacts, yes. “The pictures online don’t do them _any_ justice.”

“So you have been checking out my blog?” Jaime laughs, leaning against the table as he looks at her glancing at the swords.

He could drink that expression of hers.

The awe reflecting in her big blue eyes.

That already makes it worth to have peeled off layer for layer of yellow overgrips.

Only just for _that_ look.

“I was the first subscriber.”

“So you are _Duncan245_? I am _shocked_. You never told me that…,” Jaime gasps, but then frowns. “Though, upon reflection… I should have realized that. The Father’s birth year and Ser Duncan the Tall, of course. _Of course_ you are _Duncan245_.”

The one person to always have his back, even with his stupid blog – Jaime really should have known.

“I just support my husband wherever I can.” She shrugs, her eyes fixed on the blades.

And _of course_ Brienne wanted to see those swords even without the wish to support her husband with his projects no matter what. Jaime should know that she, as a sword enthusiast, to say the least about a warrior woman like the Maid of Tarth, would check out such a blog, even if it weren’t run by her husband.

But yet again, they are so much better un-pixelated.

“You shouldn’t have. Ever since, people started subscribing. It feels like free riders joined Ser Duncan the Tall in his quest for hunting down swords," Jaime argues with a grin. "it's like a disease that keeps spreading."

“We just want to get a glimpse at these… pieces of perfection,” Brienne argues, looking back at the swords still mesmerizing her. "And I don't see how you could ever blame them for wanting to see... to witness that."

She gingerly runs her fingers over the blades to hear the familiar sigh of the steel.

“Thank you, but they are by no means perfect. For that, I’d need the leather of the time, and not just the stuff produced like it was done back in the day. Like this… it’s only just replicas, in the end. All just echoes.”

No actual voices.

No song of steel.

Just the echo of steel.

“They are wonderful echoes, then. Like the old songs sung by a new person, another artist…,” Brienne argues, in the soft sort of voice that has Jaime dream away to distant memories with eyes wide open.

Lying in each other’s arms as morning rose, the war won, but victory not yet graspable.

Kissing her, tasting the salt and ashes, ice and snow, but foremost love.

Holding her close.

Feeling her heart beat against his, along with his, finding a rhythm, finding a beat in a world that turned a whole new direction, spun out of control and away.

“You tell me, my love, how long does it take you to remake one?” Brienne asks. Jaime pushes away from the desk to resume his position behind her. One hand rests on her hip loosely, while the side of his face brushes against hers, bringing back her wonderful smile that even a drag of a flight from Winterfell to here and King's Landing's terrible traffic wouldn't ever manage to diminish. 

“Depends on the design, really. The easier ones like this one over there?” Jaime takes up her hand to point at it with both their hands. Brienne smiles, turning her head only slightly, enjoying the intimacy of the touch, or rather how familiar that intimacy is for her.

“Such a design takes me a month, roundabout. The ones with lots of metal pieces and the like as you can see them over there?” he asks, turning her with him again to point to another sword hanging on the wall.

A small dance with only just the song of steel for them to hear.

“They take up much more time. Sometimes three months, sometimes two, or half a year. Which stands to reason. With only just a hand to spare, I still wonder how I ever managed to get anything done beyond lacing my breeches.”

“Aren’t you happy about the invention of the zipper?” Brienne laughs, relishing the beat of his heart against her back.

“That is one of the few inventions I came to appreciate,” Jaime agrees, nodding his head. “How much precious time that saved me to finally slip under the sheets with you.”

“That, and video chat,” she chuckles, recounting how thrilled her husband was to try it out for the first time, obviously almost instantly suggesting video chat striptease, _insisting_ on video chat striptease, actually.

“I still hate computers.”

“You just hate your blog. You hate that you secretly love it,” Brienne argues, laughing.

As a faithful, loyal subscriber to her husband's most wonderful sword blog, Brienne knows that Jaime even bothered to update the site to include a backdrop with crossed swords. And there is now even a masthead and an about page, and not just in the default font.

Not that Jaime would ever admit that, though.

_Obviously._

“I don’t love this blog. It's a nuisance,” he insists. "A necessity that is a plain as day pain in the ass!"

_Of course._

“Still, you keep it,” Brienne argues, raising an eyebrow at him. "So it can't be _that_ much of a pain in the ass, wouldn't you agree, my darling?"

_Just like he keeps updating it._

“To get to suppliers,” he argues vehemently.

“You said you had someone to get you the materials you need. Peck, wasn’t it? Maybe you needed it in the beginning when you still didn’t know that young fellow zombie, but now? What hinders you from closing down that oh so bothering sword blog fo yours now that you have him run the errands for you?” Brienne argues with a knowing smile. “You and I both know the answer, my love.”

“I realized that hating to love things is our personal _modus operandi_.”

“That may be true, actually. That, and loving to hate,” Brienne chuckles.

“You hate me still, my love?” Jaime asks, pulling her closer from behind, resting his chin on her strong shoulders that still feel like shoulder pieces from her armor, the one he had tailored to her needs, the one that saved her life some many times, and one time specifically, when he almost thought he lost her amidst the battlefield of the Long Night.

“Not really. _Sometimes_ , when you annoy me.”

“But I make up for it, as you might be able to recall,” he argues, kissing down her neck, which brings her to sigh so wonderfully that Jaime asks himself how he can ever spend a day apart from her, if only just to hear those precious sounds, that private music.

A harmony that only rings when they are together.

“We are not heading to the bedroom yet,” she argues in a sing-song.

“Spoilsport,” he grumbles, leaving his lips against her shoulder. Brienne laughs. “You are just spoiled.”

“Which is not entirely my fault.”

Oh no, she spoiled him with all of her goodness, all of herself, until he grew greedy, needing, wanting.

“But almost…,” Brienne argues, but then her eyes catch something. “Oh, you…”

And suddenly, that very room full of living artifacts comes to life, singing the song of the past that she thought was now bound to a velvet-covered box.

“No worries, I changed nothing about it, just polished it up a bit,” Jaime argues, placing a kiss to the side of her jaw. "After all, it'll always be yours, so I wouldn't ever dare to make greater adjustments. It's perfect just the way it is."

“It looks just like it did back when you gave it to me,” Brienne says with a warm smile.

A moment she will never forget.

_Never._

“You miss wielding it sometimes, don’t you?”

“Truth be told, I still feel the weight missing around my waist every now and then. I don't know why we ever stopped wearing swords. The scabbard is fashionable enough,” Brienne laughs. She always loved the looks of it, she loved everything about it. The blade, the weight, the handle, the lion pommel, the sound it made, cutting through the air, its very own song, the scabbard, the belt, the creaking of the leather when she readjusted her grip.

That it is a Lannister blade, one that was Ice once, a blade of legacy, of history, transformed, broken up, renewed to a new purpose.

But most importantly - that it was Jaime who gave it to her.

_It's yours. It will always be yours._

“There is no better sight than you in _only_ just that scabbard and belt around your waist,” Jaime murmurs, bringing her to shudder, then laugh again.

“You lech just have a kink."

“You keep teasing me here, woman," he argues. "And I only ever had a kink for you, you know that."

“I am not teasing," Brienne insists.

“You can wear it around the house if you liked? You know I have little opposition,” he offers. “Especially if it were the only thing you’d clothe yourself with.”

“Most kind of you, my dear.”

“Well, I suppose we should carry on. So we can maneuver to the bedroom at last. The _most_ important room, of course.”

“Is that bathrobe supposed to be a not very subtle hint?” Brienne asks, nodding down his body with a smug grin.

“First of all, it’s called a housecoat, my darling. Second, you don't get to make comments about me wearing the same thing you little tease wore for our last video chat. And third, no, just it's preparations to not waste any time,” Jaime chuckles, shooting her a suggestive look. "Despite the fact that you keep wasting it, keeping us from the promised land of the bedroom."

“As though we didn’t have time in plenty.”

“My lady, there is not enough time for that, _ever_.”

There won’t ever be enough lives to love her.

“So what? Are we supposed to spend the next two hundred years only just in bed?” Brienne huffs.

“Not much harm will be done if we do! Also, I like the idea,” Jaime argues, leaning in closer. “ _Very_ much.”

“That was _no_ idea,” she snorts.

“An inspiration, perhaps?”

“For a new sword?”

He pulls her closer to him, kisses the skin behind her ear, starting to miss less, and to appreciate what he has now, moving against his arm, his body, his lips.

Just why do people keep forgetting?

And why do they create circumstances that leave them missing?

Missing is such a foolish concept, especially if you have a chance to leave that state.

Missing her seems so utterly ridiculous now that Jaime holds her in his arms, feels the heat of her body warming up all those places within himself that grew cold over time.

Why do people forget that missing something is not at all worth it at times?

“Not as old anymore, but it can be renewed,” Jaime snickers, pressing his _lower regions_ against her with a bit more force this time. "Many times."

“Oh Seven Hells, Jaime,” Brienne laughs, pulling away from him. However, she doesn’t escape completely, his arm still loosely wrapped around her side.

She is long since done shying away from his touches. Brienne was at first, when their admissions of love were still as fresh as summer grass. Jaime told her often enough that every touch was a “fight.” When he made a step forward, towards her, she made two steps back, out of fear, the fear of not being enough, not being good enough.

However, Jaime kept chasing her until there was no escape anymore.

Jaime’s love for her was what gave Brienne confidence in the parts of herself she, for a long time, kept neglected, closed up in a casket hidden deep in her heart. The more he kissed her, the more he touched her, the more confident Brienne felt to move with him, against him, to kiss back, to seek him out, if only just for a kiss, a touch, a squeeze of the hand, a word, a quick “I love you.” The more Jaime held her close to him, the closer Brienne felt to herself, to the woman she was and is, no longer afraid of the snide remarks about her lack of conventional beauty.

However strange it may seem, they freed each other in that they loved each other, despite all of their shortcomings and because of her, because of him.

“We never should have been apart that long,” he says, with much more sincerity this time.

So long Jaime is with her, he doesn’t think about zombies and how they kill the earth.

So long she is with him, life is a rewarding concept.

“Why bother about the should have’s if there is now the chance of could be’s?” she argues.

While Brienne has pondered that question over and over when she was on the plane to King’s Landing, she feels like no longer caring right now that she has him back with her, is back in their routine, their hushed words, jokes, comments, and allusions to the intimacy Brienne missed more dearly than she would ever admit out loud.

She is a lady after all, _if an odd one_.

“Truer words are rarely spoken, my love,” he hums in agreement. “So?”

“You didn’t show me the bedroom yet,” Brienne tells him, pressing a kiss to the corner of his mouth, only to pull away with laughter that Jaime cannot help but join in.

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” he says, pulling her along.

Forgetting all darkness.

Leaving it behind.

Leaving it resting in an onyx blade, hidden away.

Far, far away.

Because Jaime has closeness now.

And it is closeness that he needs.

Her closeness.

“I missed you.”

“I love you.”

_I am home._

_I am home with you._

_I am home because of you._


	5. Familiar Glows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaime and Brienne spend a lazy morning, finally reunited, talking about God and the world, and whatever else comes to mind. 
> 
> In only just their housecoats, of course. 
> 
> I still suck at summaries, you know it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone, thanks for keeping around, kudoing, and commenting!
> 
> Yet again, just to be sure to have said it: If you are looking for the backstory of the immortality, it is not time for it just yet, so you will have to be patient with this story. I want this to unfold organically. But fret not, there will be some sort of explanation at some point. I just want to be sure not to raise expectations to this being a grandeur sort of reveal. It's just some backstory to justify their immortality, no more, no less. At the core, this story is at any stage about Jaime and Brienne and their dealing with spending eternity. 
> 
> In any case, I hope you'll enjoy this chapter. 
> 
> Much love! ♥♥♥

“You could tidy up more, you know?” Brienne sighs, glancing around the living room, which keeps turning shape in the daylight as the sun keeps running its circles, recasting light and shadow, creating new shapes within a room that doesn't change at all. 

_Yet, it does._

She insisted that they relocate to the living room because she had already seen everything that was worth looking at in the bedroom, and despite Jaime's insistence, there is much more to see in the living room than in the bedroom, no matter how _luxurious_ he may look spread across the sheets.

“You say that to a one-handed man, Brienne. I can hardly hold a broom with a single hand!” he argues, tightening his grip on her ever so slightly as they lie on the couch in only just their housecoats, relishing those short intermezzos of the stretches of exposed skin rubbing against each other, feeling the warmth, the texture, the familiar shapes and lines. 

After they were apart for what feels like a small eternity, it seems almost impossible for Jaime and Brienne to let go of each other. Thus, they somehow remain entangled at almost all times, mapping one another anew. 

They could feel their apparent _need_ for each other in every touch they exchanged once Jaime showed her to the _promised land_ of the bedroom. Every touch set them ablaze, while making them simultaneously shudder against the cool sensation of touches that are familiar, yet always new, always thrilling, wanted, needed. 

Passion and intimacy morphed into hours of rediscovery of each other’s bare bodies. Kisses to map the shape of them, fingers to slide across each other's skin to trace the new shapes, new bumps, and scars, emptinesses finally filledas they became one, moved as one, breathed as one, losing all track of where one body ended and another began, no longer sure if that new bump or scar belonged to this body or that body, and no longer caring either. 

Swallowing each other's moans, each other's voices, to make them ring as one.

Holding on to each other, to the sensations familiar but oh so thrilling, oh so maddening.

Holding on to those moments before they collapsed upon them, chasing their renewal once they caught their breaths.

And that, in turn, those moments morphed into the most wonderful of afterglows, lying entangled in bed, the white cotton sheets creating an alcove about them, shielding them from the world turning way too fast, breaths evening out, succumbing to the darkness of good night’s sleep that claimed them soon enough. 

_At last._

Because both had been restless while without the familiar weight of the other, their scent, the sound of their breaths, the familiar presence beside them in bed.

But as morning rose and roused them with the gentlest of touches of the first beams of light breaking through the window, Jaime and Brienne both realized that, at last, their nights had been peaceful again, thanks to familiarity rocking them to sleep, renewing them as they renewed each other.

And _now_ they still enjoy their extended afterglow… Well, after a quick _feast_ in the morning, there is apparently also a reason for it that they take their time of the afterglow, relishing the hum of the still heated flesh. However, they moved up to the couch to have some more space, and so that Brienne has something else to look at, to familiarize herself with, upon her insistence and against his complaints. 

After all, she still has to familiarize herself with this place, has to get to know it, has to learn all about it. 

_Because this is a part of him._

And Brienne wants to know _all_ about her husband, to keep in touch with him, so not to fall out of touch with him.

“Oh, _please_ , you have a prosthetic working just fine. You make wonderful swords with it! As if you could not swing a broom,” she huffs, patting against his arm.

“Well, I have a system, I will admit.”

“You clean only once you start sneezing from the dust?”

“You do know me oh too well, my love,” he sighs with a lazy smile.

“But you don't expect me to clean up after you, right?”

“I would never.”

Brienne rolls her head slightly, feeling the hairs on his chest move against the side of her face as she changes position, to take a different angle while looking around the room. “Though I will admit that this house has an unexpected sort of charm.”

“I found it in an ad in a local newspaper. When I first came to visit the property, I wanted to jump back into the taxi and never come back, but then I brought myself to at least take a look inside… and as I stood right here where the couch now is, I discovered some unused potential," Jaime tells her.

In the retrospective, Jaime is still surprised that he took that chance. Back then, he was less than pleased. Though that seemed to fit his overall mood of the time.

Not that it increased very much since, until Brienne climbed out of the taxi and he felt like living again, of course.

Back then, Jaime still considered renting only just a garage to work on the swords there, but he realized that he needed the swords to be a part of his life, his daily routine, to ease some fo the hollow ache out of the pit of his stomach that drew him to King's Landing and away from the love of his oh so long life. And as he stood in the middle of this house, with faded wallpaper, dusty furniture, broken windows, and cracked paint, Jaime knew, simply knew that there was no other place but this one to make the swords that were only just fiction inside his head by the time.

It was a moment of hope that rose from the dust that whirled up around his feet as he kept walking around the house, assuring him that this was the only choice left. This house or no other.

And so the contract was signed and the hard work of reconstruction began, to make this house habitable again. However, if anything good came of the hard labor, then it was that it helped Jaime get a feeling for shapes, a feeling for how to cut, to hammer, which he could later on use when he started to put hammer and anvil to the swords he wanted to recreate.

"Did you know that this house was built right on top of where they once held tourneys back during the old days?” he goes on to ask. 

“Oh, really?” Brienne smiles, letting out a sigh. “It’s a pity that those sites keep disappearing.”

“They call it _improving infrastructure_ , I call it the destruction of the past," Jaime huffs, less than pleased. 

“Well, but now you have the house instead, a refuge for all those artifacts from the former days in the shape of swords, hm?” Brienne argues. Jaime looks at her, a smile creeping up his lips. 

Only in her eyes does he find hope in such measure.

It is her eyes containing his world.

“I suppose. For a time, I considered just buying the property to get rid of the house and tear it all down until the old sand from the battlefield comes back to light. You know, to rebuild the tourney site right there as it used to be," Jaime tells her. 

“What made you decide against it?”

“The fact that no one ever jousts or has proper sword fight these days. So once I go, they’ll build a new house on top, or a garage, or whatever else they can come up with. And so I said to myself that I could just as well keep the house, then, and remind myself of what was here once as I started to work on other histories bound in steel."

“How many tourneys did you win, you remind me?”

“I can’t remember, to be honest. I won quite a few jousts. Then I lost some… That one time, Loras Tyrell bested me, the little shit,” he huffs.

“He was a formidable knight. And I think Renly loved him very much,” Brienne says, leaning her cheek back on his chest.

While she will forever love Renly in some way, the ache for him has become dull over the years. She still mourns his loss, but she knows by now that it was a lesser kind of love, and that the love she shares with Jaime is worth far more sacrifices than she was willing to make if only for a glance or a smile from the man she once called her King and vowed to give her lie for as part of his Kingsguard.

“You speak fondly of him now. I don’t think you would have said so a few hundred years back,” Jaime argues. “Loras was an arrogant little shit, no matter how good he may have been as a knight.”

“Some things change, some things don’t… he didn’t deserve the death he got. That is what I know,” Brienne argues.

“ _That_ is true,” Jaime is bound to agree.

“So I do better than speak ill of him now that he is dead,” she concludes.

“Since almost all of our friends are dead now, it’s a bit of challenge not to have a bit of fun at people’s expenses, wouldn’t you agree, though?”

Needless to mention that Jaime very well needs to bitch about some of those people. That's one of the few things that keep him sane these days.

“Might be.”

“Tyrion is all about gossip, too, so you could say that he just infected me with that disease.”

“Did you talk to him as of late?” Brienne asks. 

“He called me once, a few months ago. Only talked about how much fun he had and how he even managed to catch a tropical disease that’s cured by now – giving me almost a heart attack in turn,” Jaime huffs.

He was less than pleased about that phone call. Jaime worries about Tyrion even when he feels like not caring about much of anything, just like he cares about Brienne’s wellbeing, no matter the weariness he feels for the world at large. His little brother is the one family he is on speaking terms with, the one family that remained, really. And now that oh so deeply loved dwarf is out for some strange adventures, getting himself into trouble, and finding a strange sort of pleasure in them.

It appears that everyone of those who remained has those phases, not always congruent to a lifecycle, however. Davos started his first tender steps at poetry almost all of a sudden, having spent fifty years in the life he lived by the time, as a diplomat at Dragonstone, chasing shadows of the past in the hallways while no one was watching.

Because apparently, you don’t necessarily start over when you “die” and are then “reborn,” jumping into the next adventure. Jaime spent twenty years in this life and didn’t feel any remorse or weariness until he did.

_Or maybe the renewing effect of “death” and “rebirth” start to wear out after some many hundred years of overuse, who knows?_

For Tyrion, the moment came some time ago, dissatisfied with his studies, his research, his political work – _for a moment he even, if **very** briefly, considered quitting the alcohol for a time _ – he decided that he needed a fresh perspective, something else to look at.

After some careful planning and gathering of resources, he was gone.

And now he is busy giving Jaime heartaches whenever he hears that he almost broke his leg scrambling up this mount in Old Valyria, or caught that stomach flu after he drank “water” in one of the “establishments” in Volantis.

Thus, Jaime finds himself in worry for that little devil who seems to catch up on a youth he would have liked to spend another way, had he been granted the chance.

_But maybe that’s how you should go about it all, right? Trying to live the lives you weren’t granted to live…_

How else to spend eternity? Always doing the same thing over and over?

According to a definition Jaime heard a while back, doing the same things over and over, expecting a different result is a kind of madness.

And who would want to spend eternity in eternal madness?

Well, he would know one guy, but Jaime shoved a sword through his back.

But then again… aren’t they all mad after all, even if they don’t repeat themselves all the while?

“He is your brother, you should call him more often, especially if he gets himself into such trouble,” Brienne argues. “And we both know he is looking for it.”

"Most definitely. That little dwarf will forever be a troublemaker."

At some point it seems like a small wonder to Brienne that her husband has been acting the way he has as of late, considering already that circumstance alone. She knows just how fiercely Jaime loves his little brother, despite or perhaps also because they went through such hardships, had to suffer through hating each other, or rather, their actions.

Jaime once told her that he never felt as much of a strong bond for Tyrion ever since the Long Night.

“I suppose it is the _Dance of Life and Death_ that puts things into perspective,” he had told her, holding her close one cold night at Winterfell, the smell of War against the Dead still lying in the air like thick smoke. “After all that’s happened… everything that took place before seems almost shockingly small by comparison.”

And Brienne could only find herself agreeing back then. The Long Night made many things fade out, fade away, because all those troubles, quarrels, fights, vendettas, they seemed like particles of dust all of a sudden. And over time, they blew the dust into the winds of Spring, bound to hear them sing their laments every now and then when the gust blows just the right way to remind them that there once was something so awfully important, until it was no more.

“ _I_ tried, but the little devil never answers his phone these days. One should think that he got it by now that the dragons are a thing of the past. He still thinks he can chase some egg down across the Narrow Sea. Despite the fact that he’s found nothing yet,” he grumbles. “Except for diseases, apparently. And I don’t even want to know what diseases regarding his libido he may catch, because I am quite certain that his self-discovery trip does by no means entail celibacy or abstinence.”

“Well, at least it’s no year-long trip just getting drunk again,” Brienne suggests, wrinkling her nose.

“We weren’t _always_ drunk. Just most of the time.”

To this day, Jaime asks himself how Tyrion ever managed to convince him of that trip. Once they returned, Jaime felt as though he suffered through a year-long hangover thereafter, something for which he blames his little brother to this day.

_But oh well, the things you do for the dear family._

“Did you check out _every_ vineyard in Highgarden, you tell me?” Brienne chuckles.

She can still vividly remember how Jaime came back after the trip. She expected him to waltz into the room in a loose cotton shirt, a bit mussed from the ride for sure, but certainly she did not expect him to almost crawl up the stairs to their condo, dark circles under his eyes, ready to fall asleep just after he crossed the threshold.

He kissed her once, if lazily, only to collapse onto the bed and not wake up until one and a half days later.

 _Well, at least they brought some samples along_ , Brienne thinks to herself in amusement.

“Pretty much,” he agrees, only to go ahead to tap his index finger against her collarbone repeatedly. “And hey, _you_ don’t get to complain about being a year away to do things with only just the besties, my lady. I was not the one who spend an entire year chasing that band I forgot the name of.”

“ _The Blue Bards_. They played the most wonderful remakes of the old songs of our times. And it was their last tour,” Brienne insists. “I couldn’t miss out on that!”

Just thinking about it makes her want to hum the songs again.

Makes her want to dance.

“So you had to see _every_ damn performance?” he huffs, chuckling softly.

Jaime vaguely recalls shouty phone calls with Brienne where she sounded strangely _ecstatic_ after each concert she attended.

While Brienne never lacked enthusiasm for something she set out to do, it did surprise him to have her babble on and on about “oh, the atmosphere, Jaime!” and “the costumes, they even used actual leather!” and how she got to take a picture with them, got their autograph… when all Jaime could think of right at that moment was that if anyone were to know what and who they are, they’d be the ones being asked for autographs.

_They spoke to a former Queen after all._

So that was one of those lives she spent as a fan, which was very endearing, and on some many occasions even beneficial for him. So long she went to concerts around the area, Brienne would come back to their apartment still drunk from the beer and the music, humming the songs against Jaime’s lips as he welcomed her back with a kiss.

 _And hungry, **very** hungry_.

For something that only her dear husband can only ever serve her, _of course_ , and something Jaime was _more_ than happy to give to her until she was sated.

“Of course you couldn’t miss out on that,” Jaime chuckles, readjusting his position slightly. “There is no one who would ever appreciate those echoes from the past the way you do. It would have done the songs no justice if they hadn’t travelled into your ear.”

He presses a kiss to her earlobe, making her snicker as his stubble rubs against the sensitive skin there.

“It’s so good to know that you understand, my dear husband.”

“We do know each other well after all… as could be expected after so many years of spending eternity together.”

She smiles at him, and he smiles back. She lets out a sigh, that sort of dreamy sigh that Jaime only ever got to hear once war was over and Spring swept across the Seven Kingdoms, settled into marital life, settled into a life that belonged to no one but themselves, destined to go on for a long, very long time.

“They played _A Rose of Gold_ tonight, just the way they did back for our harvest feast five year into our reign,” she had told him with just that dreamy sigh after one particular concert she went to. Jaime could do nothing much but smirk as he kissed her, getting a taste of the music as she hummed the melody into his mouth.

To think that Brienne of Tarth, who used to claim that she only ever cared about her oaths, protecting people, honor, and swords, would find such excitement and pleasure in the simple things of hearing musing she once heard before.

What was perhaps the very best about it, though, was the surprise on her face when she walked back to where the cars and busses were standing after the last concert was officially over, and Jaime stood there by the car, ready to pick her up, despite his _insistence_ that he wouldn’t come near that “minefield full of zombies” any time soon.

Her running up to him and kissing him deeply made Jaime forget about the mud ruining his pricey boots the same way it blurred the zombie minefield away.

Because that is the only song Jaime ever came to care about: Her song.

“They played different songs each time. And I told you that you could come along,” Brienne says, that dreamy sigh finding its way back into her voice.

“And I told you that I don’t fancy standing amidst sweating zombies.”

“It was very civilized,” Brienne argues.

“Even civilized zombies sweat,” he huffs. “To think that you, the honorable Maid of Tarth, would be a groupie one day…”

“I _wasn’t_ a groupie,” she insists with a smile. “I just like that group, only discovered them very late, and didn’t want to miss out on the old music they played, for as long as it lasted. It sounded _just_ like it did back when we had singers and minstrels fill the great hall of the Red Keep and Evenfall Hall with tunes and dance. They no longer make that kind music.”

“That is true,” Jaime agrees, nodding his head.

He still remembers with fondness how Brienne’s eyes sparked up in the brightest of blues every time they had singers and dancers perform for them back when great halls were filled with people and not just show cases of what are now museums.

She’d clap her hands along every now and then when the music carried her far enough away to forget about her shyness, or hummed along once she knew the melody, or clapped her hands ever the louder once the last note ceased.

Obviously, Jaime made sure that they played very, _very_ often.

_A husband has to see to it that his wife remains happy after all._

If only to have her smile like that.

If only to make her sigh dreamily.

If only to make her breathe music into him as they kiss.

“I wish they would continue with the music,” Brienne exhales.

She was very disappointed when she read online that _The Blue Bards_ would quit for a while, needing time “to work on their solo careers,” which, so Brienne knows, is the equivalent to breaking up because everyone hates everyone, and likely only ever getting back together once money runs out or it’s time for the anniversary to bring out a Best Of album.

At some point she had to laugh at herself for earnestly feeling devastated as she read the words flickering up on the screen. One should think that a woman who has faced so much danger, has overcome such trials, seen so much, so much death, so much bad, so much pain, has witnessed, felt it within her own body, would no longer find it in herself to care about such news.

After all, it's all just particles of dust, right?

However, the plain truth is that even if you gain a perhaps more insight into society, into history, as you see it passing by, as you are forced to learn to look at the world from a distance, become exiled here and there, you do not necessarily become any more insightful.

You still get upset about your husband leaving up the toilet lid. You still freak out over running late. You worry sick when you hear that a man who grew to be such a close friend is ill, despite his immortality.

You still get upset at the little things, just like it is those little things that bring you greatest pleasure, makes you remember those moments, those particles of dust, in all their tiny little details.

Like an oriel reflecting rainbows.

The smell of the first flower of Spring breaking through the melting ice and snow.

The warmth of his embrace as he holds you close in his sleep.

The way his lips curl into a smile when he kisses you.

How the sand crunched between your toes as you walked with him, hand in hand, along the coastline of Tarth for the very first time following the Long Night.

“Maybe they will go on some time? Normally, bands have a revival once they have used up all money,” Jaime tells her, seemingly thinking what she thinks more often than she ever would have estimated when she first got to know him.

Because back then, Brienne was fairly convinced that they had _absolutely_ nothing in common.

“Hopefully. I have been looking for a replacement, but there is none,” Brienne sighs. She can’t remember how many websites and online forums she went through in the faint hope to find another band, another echo to carry her back down to where they once were…

_But no such luck._

“But you have their CDs, you have them on your _EyriePod_ …,” Jaime argues, to which she grunts, “That’s not the same and you know it. Just like wooden swords or swords made of plastic wouldn’t be real enough for you.”

They are always chasing reality, the things that are real, or rather, the things that once were real.

“True again,” Jaime is bound to agree. “I am just saying… Maybe there is hope that they will run out of money to _force_ them to make another tour.”

“Way to encourage someone,” Brienne snorts.

“You and I both know I am only a great motivator in the bedroom,” Jaime chuckles, drumming his fingers on her toned midsection playfully.

“Oh, are you?” she laughs.

“With that suggestive tone you have right there, I assume I already motivated you for another round of fun times,” he chimes, now drawing nonsense patterns over her flat stomach, going further down to the side of her thigh with every word, something that obviously doesn’t go unnoticed by Brienne.

Though neither does she mind, really.

“My love, in all those years that we two are husband and wife, you still haven’t learned that this was by no means suggestive,” she argues with a grin.

“To me, _everything_ you say is suggestive.”

“Wherein lies the problem.”

Brienne lost count of the many times they were almost (and sometimes actually) caught in very awkward, very heated situations they got into exactly because Jaime takes anything for a suggestion for love-making.

“ _Problem_? You never complained about that. In fact, you always seemed to very much enjoy it,” he huffs, giving her hip a gentle squeeze. “Deep down you know that you love my spontaneity, which I am more than willing to bring to the bedroom, or outside it, wherever there is occasion.

“It’s one of those things I can live with, shall I say?” she sighs.

“So generous of you,” he laughs.

“You know me.”

“Indeed,” Jaime agrees, chuckling softly.

Brienne blows out air through her nostrils, taking in the scents, familiarizing herself with them, those little particles ready to be picked up by her. “You know, when I heard that you got yourself a house here, I already feared that if I ever were to come by, you would make it a mancave with billiard and the smell of cigars. And of course, to fulfill your dirty little fantasies about mirrors on the ceiling in the bedroom as well as the living room.”

“That is still in the planning,” he snickers. “Now that you have come here… I might just as well buy some and install them.”

He gives her hip a single squeeze, which Brienne ignores.

“That is disgusting,” she tells him.

“What we do is most definitely _not_ disgusting. It’s one of the best things ever. Arguably _the_ best.”

“I don’t have to _watch_ us doing that. You know, I am a part of it.”

“You just underestimate the thrill.”

“I would just constantly worry that the thing would fall down on us.”

“I am a good craftsman,” Jaime insists. “If I had a mirror at the ceiling so we could watch ourselves during those moments of ecstasy, you can be sure that we could make the whole house shake without that thing coming down.”

“ _Right_. Which is why _I_ had to rearrange all picture frames back in our apartment at Riverrun, because you were incapable of hammering the nails in a straight line?”

“My dearest wife, even a stubborn man the likes of me can learn new things. And so I learned the arts of craftsmanship,” Jaime tells her.

“I swear by the Seven if you install mirrors on the ceiling, I will catch the next best flight to Winterfell and never return to that house again in a lifetime, and you know that those lifetimes are long!”

“Such drastic measurements over a mirror? How dramatic of you,” he laughs, gently knocking his chin against the back of her head. “Needless to mention that it’d be pretty heartless of you to leave me for such trivialities.”

“And since it is such a _triviality_ , I believe you can fare without it all the same.”

“Do you think now would be the time to reconsider finally putting up a camera…,” Jaime means to say, but she cuts him off, “For someone who claims to hate the new technologies, you seem strangely fond of video taping.”

“Because you don't let me have the good old mirrors!”

“Poor you.”

“I know,” he says, letting out a fake sniffle towards the end. “But think about it, that would make a lot of things easier for you and I while we are apart. Then I wouldn’t have to call it all to mind as I think about you, lying in bed…”

“Jaime, cut it now.”

“What? You won’t agree to phone sex, no video chat sex, no mirrors, no sex tapes. How else am I to keep my aching need for you in check if you are not around to answer just those needs?”

“Well, I am here now.”

“True, but still.”

“No. How do you always say? Life is about choices. On that one, you have only just two: Either you get yourself the real deal, or you will have to call it to mind from memory to answer those oh so aching needs of yours.”

“So long I have you, I think I will pull through. Though of course it’d be most kind of you to repay me a little bit, now that you made think about all those aching needs and thrilling possibilities you deny your dear husband?” he suggests, his lips brushing against her ear as he gives her thigh another gentle squeeze.

“Maybe later the day.”

“ _Maybe_? My love, it’s only a question of _when_ and _how often_ , not of _whether_ it’s going to happen,” he points out to her as smugly as ever.

“Good to know that you already have plans for the day,” Brienne snorts, tapping his arm lightly.

“You said the flight was such a drag, I thought a lazy day at home would be just the right treatment to the jetlag.”

“Oh, so that is what it is, then.”

“Mhmmm,” he hums, meaning to lean down for a kiss, but that is when she claps him on the arm more forcefully, removing the arm wrapped around her. “Okay, I need to get up.”

“No, you don’t,” he pouts, readjusting his grip on her.

“Yes, my legs need some movement,” she moans, trying to swat his arm away. “C’mon.”

“I can give them movement, if you let me? Wrapped around my back, hm?” he suggests, leaning his head in the nape of her neck. Brienne sighs, “We’ve had _a lot_ of that already this morning. Which is why my legs need some _other_ task.”

“What about our sweet plans of never leaving bed again that you mentioned yesterday?”

“This is a couch, and I never said it was a plan,” she argues, relishing the sensation of his hair tickling her neck.

“But it could be!”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“No.”

Brienne grumbles as she pushes his arm aside to stand up.

“Where do you think are you going, abandoning me?” he asks, falling back on the couch with a pout.

No matter how old he may be by now, Jaime Lannister will always keep that boyish charm inherent to him.

Something that doesn't age.

And something that makes her love him only more.

_If that is even possible._

“I am not abandoning you,” she argues, rolling her eyes as she stretches out her long limbs. “I want to have a look at the gallery again.”

“But you already looked at it yesterday!” he mewls.

“I just _saw_ them, now I want to _look_ at them. I have to get to know them,” Brienne points out to him, readjusting the knot of her robe before proceeding towards the small room where Jaime put the swords to display.

“Or you could lie down with me again!” he calls after her.

“I hope they all have their names,” Brienne asks, ignoring his shout, now already in the small room, her voice _playfully innocent_.

“Of course they do,” Jaime huffs, turning his head on the cushion a few times to find a comfortable position even without her with him. Once he is more or less satisfied, Jaime closes his eyes, outstretches his left arm into the air, as though he was pointing at the swords out of his view.

“Starting from the one hanging furthest to the left: _Maiden’s Light_ , _Justicebringer_ , _Lion’s Claw_ , _Spring’s Dream_ , _Imp’s Delight_ , if only to piss off Tyrion with his self-made wine brand, _Promised Queen_ , _Wind’s Sigh_ , _Rose’s Thorn_ , and _Bluest Eye_.”

Brienne walks around, taking a moment for each sword as he says their names.

_They say the best swords have names. Any ideas?_

_Oathkeeper._

Brienne always knew that there was something very powerful to the act of naming things, people, to put labels on them, but it didn’t really occur to her personally until Jaime told her that the sword with lions on the pommel, decorated with swirls and rubies, was hers to name, was hers to keep.

_It’s yours. It will always be yours._

That was the first time she was granted the chance to name something important to her. And as fate turned, it would remain the one thing Brienne would name that would come to bear such meaning. Others got to name their children, to continue a legacy, to continue a life reaching beyond oneself.

However, when you are stuck in a life that reaches beyond itself on its own, then you it seems oddly out of place to name something or someone who may not.

So perhaps that makes Jaime’s newly found passion ever the more important, the act of naming things, the act of creating things, recreating them, breathing life into duty metal, spoiled with overgrip.

_Those swords may survive even us. And isn’t that idea comforting – if only strangely so?_

Jaime lets his arm sink again, slipping it beneath his robe to lie flat on his chest.

He memorized those swords as he remade them. He knows every bump, every scratch, because he made them, or didn’t manage to unmake them.

“The last one is a clear favorite because it’s actually blue steel. And not just painted or so,” he goes on to say, eyes closed, mind fleeting. “The blade has been specifically made that way. It needs high temperatures before tempering it to create the blue sheen, but the pommel and handle are actually from the Sapphire Isle from before the times of the Durrandons starting to marry into the Tarth clan, believe it or not.”

“It’s marvelous,” Brienne says, eyes fixed on that piece of beauty, that bit of history, of past, right before her.

And in a way, this is also part of her history, a story that was told before she was born.

 _In a sense, we have more in common with swords than we do with people these days_ , Brienne thinks to herself, reaching up to run one long finger over the blue blade holding so many stories untold, uncovered, protected.

“I did just one change and added sapphires to the pommel. I found that more fitting,” Jaime goes on to say. Brienne shakes her head.

For that her husband was never known for his modesty, he seems to be downplaying that apparent art more than she ever would have thought possible.

“It’s _absolutely_ beautiful, Jaime. Why didn’t you include it on the blog?” Brienne asks, looking at the blade another time, which reflect the light filtering through the small window now ever the more.

A glimmer of the former days.

A beam of light travelling back in time as it simultaneously leaps forward.

“Because I try my best to keep as much away from the zombies as is possible,” Jaime grumbles, turning his head around again to bury half of his face in the fabric.

_That she always has to bring up the zombies… and that stupid blog!_

“But that should be seen by the world!” she insists.

“ _Seen by the world_? My love, there are not as many subscribers to that foolish blog of mine to even suffice for such a lofty number as ‘the world.’ Needless to mention that even if the swords were supposed to be anything of great value, the zombies wouldn’t ever see the worth in them if it smacked them right in the dumb faces. You say they should be seen, but the zombies are busy looking away, busy forgetting.”

“Then maybe it’s time to remind them.”

“You can’t change zombies.”

Brienne tilts her head to the side.

No matter how hopeful she tries to remain with regards to the race they saved, the people they preserved to live on and reach beyond what was the now many hundred years ago, she knows that many things are awry on this planet they inhabit.

Brienne stopped watching the news for just that reason. The images of death, famine, drought in Dorne, mafias in the Eyrie, children across the Narrow Sea suffering hunger thanks to political quarrels no one wants to put aside because oil is too valuable, weapons are too important, and other peoples’ lives, by contrast, mean too little to make the body of political beings reconsider the approach… they are everywhere, and they suck the hope out of you like a dry sponge.

 _It is hard at times, to keep believing in a world that is seemingly always on the verge of the next catastrophe – because zombies can’t keep their shit together_ , Brienne thinks to herself. _And now I sound like my dear husband already!_

“True again. But still, if you make the world see it, it may, sometime in the future, end up in a museum or a dictionary, or a history book perhaps?” she goes on to say anyway.

Because no matter what, no matter the famine, no matter the political climate, they live on, whether they want to or not.

“You and I both know that it’s much more dangerous these days to leave traces in the print. No one can tell what Jaime Lannister, the Kingslayer, Goldenhand the Just, looked like back in the day. Same being true for his lady wife, the Maid of Tarth, Brienne the Beauty. Even the portraits that were done during that time, or some later eras, do my looks… _absolutely_ no justice. But _these_ days? With high-resolution cameras youngster zombies use to take their stupid selfies with? We may have to answer way more questions about how comes there is someone who looks just like us some fifty years back. Talk about the great advances of technology and how they come to haunt us. I don’t think we’d want more entries with our name underneath them, so long we can help it.”

“You change styles and looks so effortlessly that if you used another name, no one could tell it’s you, my dear. And you can always choose to stay undercover,” Brienne argues, if jokingly.

She knows that this danger looms above them in a longer time now. While both profit from the fast approaching, renewing, technology-driven, advances-chasing society idly focused on improvement, progress, updates, there are also drawbacks.

Dangerous drawbacks.

They already had to quickly fade away from public memory one time, after some student thought that the picture printed in the yearbook of the _Citadel University_ , of when Brienne received her diploma for her PhD in Anthropology, looked strangely familiar, because an equally tall woman, twenty years before, stood next to a man without a hand, as he received his diploma for a PhD in Westerosi History.

They didn’t take any chances back then, packed up, and left.

And that was before there were cell phones, even.

Though in the end, nothing became of it. That student never pushed the investigation any further.

_Lucky for us – because that meant we didn’t have to fake our own deaths at that point of time already._

“Not with so many zombies lurking on my front porch to piss on my _ipomoea alba_.”

Brienne turns her head, her eyes widening ever so slightly, “You have moon flowers now? You always told me that you are no gardener.”

Her dear husband keeps surprising her, no way around it.

“I thought I might try some new things. And when I saw the package with the picture on top, I had to think of you, so I _had_ to buy them,” Jaime says with a grin.

It was a rainy day, and he wanted nothing but flee from the stuffed, sticky supermarket with no windows, as he ran the errands for the week, until he saw the moon flowers on the small package right next to canned soda on sale, and some small gym machine the supermarket seemingly wanted to get rid of.

“They were just the cheapest and that is why you bought them,” Brienne snorts.

“My love, you do me no justice. You know I am _helplessly_ romantic. So of course I bought the most expensive flower seeds they had in that supermarket. And I may add that they are not as easy to grow. It took me some many tries. And now the zombies are pissing on them, waiting for me to just toss a sword over to them. They can count themselves lucky that I don’t actually toss it _at_ them… But yes, you do me no justice, my loving wife, and my heart pains, thus,” Jaime calls out in a dramatic voice, letting his arm sink down the side of the couch, feigning death, which makes him feel more than odd about himself.

Because he wasn’t pretending back when he had the obsidian in hand…

“You’ll live.”

“As we know,” he sighs.

_And isn’t that part of the problem?_

“What is in that chest next to the table?” Brienne asks, shuffling further through the room.

“Hm? Those are the blades I got from Peck by now. I collect them there until I have some inspiration,” he explains, wrinkling his nose.

“Can I look inside?”

“You know that all that is mine is yours, my dearest wife.”

Brienne bends down to open the wooden, _if **slightly** dusty_ , chest to take a look inside, hoping to find some more private treasures to add to her memory collections full of particles, “You didn’t lie about the bad conditions for some… Is that _gum_?!”

Jaime nods. “Yes, gum. Smells like Dornish plum flavor. That was very popular twenty years ago. Though I never understood the hype about that trendy taste. Blegh.”

“But why _gum_?!” Brienne asks, still staring at the faintly lilac blotch on that piece of history, which makes her feel bad for that sword, however irrational that may be.

_This is a shame._

“To stick the blade to the sheath,” Jaime explains simply.

“What?” Brienne makes a face.

“The owner had a kid. Didn’t build a proper holder to attach it to the wall. Kid kept playing with the sword. Owner thought, rightly so, that maybe the kid would be dumb enough to poke one of his eyes out. So the owner just put gum in the sheath to make it stick so you could no longer take out the blade, or so Peck told me. I suppose I have to be glad that the guy didn’t start with superglue.”

“That is a crime…,” Brienne says, her expression pensive. “Well, the stuff from the blade you can get off by freezing it.”

“Huh?” Jaime frowns, opening one eye to look roughly in direction of the small room into which Brienne disappeared.

“I read that online,” she goes on to say. “Either put the sword in the freezer or get some ice spray. Then the gum peels off far easier.”

“It is during those moments that I realize just how much I love you,” Jaime sighs.

“Because I know how to get gum off of swords? Yeah, that’s a reason worth marrying a person for.”

“I’d marry you again each day, even without your mad gum removal skills.”

And that couldn’t be any truer.  

If Brienne would want him to get them a priest to marry, he’d be on the telephone any time to call up whatever bastard zombie would be available for them.

While their promise would never need renewal, as strong as it stands no matter the circumstance, both realized that there is no harm in the celebration of this vow, the one that relates only just to them, no one but them, their little treasure that they can bring back to life without having to forge it, without having to trace back the history of a blade, a design.

A priest, a tree, a small abandoned chapel in the woods, their rings, and them, that is all it takes to celebrate that which they have.

_One of the things that makes eternity among the zombies a little more bearable._

“You just think this will lure me back onto the couch,” Brienne snorts.

 _She does know me well_ , Jaime thinks to himself, chuckling softly.

“I’d rather just have you back in my arms,” he calls out to her. “We still have to talk out that new time management. I think we should reconsider just staying in bed for almost all our time.”

“And _I_ don’t think so.”

“Ugh…,” he grunts. “In any case, I wanted to ask your opinion on one of the blades.”

“Which one?” Brienne asks, looking around.

“The one in the cardboard box with the seven on top,” Jaime tells her.

“One moment…,” Brienne says. Jaime can hear her feet shuffling across the carpet, the scrunch of the cardboard box being opened.

After a few more shuffles, she appears before him. Jaime turns on the side, facing towards her, a lazy smile spreading over his face. “Oh, there you are. Now that I see you with the blade… yeah, you should shed that bathrobe and only fashion yourself in sword and belt.”

Brienne rolls her eyes as she waddles back over to sit down on the couch, her back moving against his thighs.

“What of it?” she asks, her big blue eyes fixed on the blade.

If Jaime is chasing her dreamy sighs over bands, then he is ever the more chasing just that expression with recreating fragments made of steel from the past. There is a way with which she handles a blade, the care, the familiarity, that makes him think, if only just for a moment that maybe that stupid sword blog is useful after all.

_To bring that spark to her eyes._

“I am indecisive from where and what time it comes from exactly. I have been wondering for a while,” Jaime goes on to explain. “It’s definitely from after Robert’s Rebellion, and I daresay even after the Long Night. But the metals? I can’t tell the specific location. Do you have a clue?

“I see what you mean… hm,” she mutters pensively, sucking her lower lip into her mouth in just the way that has Jaime want to kiss her, but before he gets any chance, Brienne gets up again, swinging the sword back and forth a few times.

“Ah, my warrior lady. Still as fierce,” he muses.

_A sight worth dying for._

At least in Jaime’s humble opinion.

“Shush now, I am listening.”

Jaime just watches her, reminding himself of the many times he just watched on with growing fondness and admiration as Brienne wielded her blade in a more private setting, no longer forced to unsheathe it to defend her life or that of others, including his own.

After the Long Night, both still trained regularly. And there was a spark not just from when the blades kissed and sprang apart but from the joy it came with upon every time the blades collided. The simple test of strength and skill, measuring improvement, skill, trying out new techniques, new blows, new ways to twist and turn to give the blade a new angle, more force, or less… it was a dance of its own, a dance neither one ever wanted to quit in a lifetime.

Brienne sits back down again, running her thumb over the blade.

“Oh, I think I know now,” she says after a long moment.

“Really? So you heard the song of steel?” he chimes.

“I think I did.”

“So what does the song say?” he asks.

Brienne licks her lips before she goes on to explain, “It’s dust, from a comet that hit the earth. If I am not mistaken, there was a smith on the Wall who worked it into the blades, at least the special ones. As a blessing. Sam told me about it. He read it in a book. Here, once you take the dust away, you can see the small speckles.”

Jaime feels a grin spread across his face. “Oh, you are right.”

He should have remembered that!

But that is the thing when you hoard all of that knowledge, which is a process you cannot stop from happening when information keeps sinking into the pigment of your skin, your blood, your flesh: At some point memories fade, blur into one another, making them indistinguishable.

Some you push away, others you don’t, and only when it’s way too late do you realize that this is a moment you should have remembered in more detail.

Jaime never thought he’d find himself missing memories, but he does now, a little more each day.

“I’ve never seen a blade of that sort. I only ever heard the tales Sam told me. That smith must have been a true master of his profession. It takes a lot to work such metal into a blade without brittling or causing fissures. People said he gathered some of the comets that struck the earth during the Long Night to remake them,” Brienne goes on to say, recounting the words Sam spoke to her when he finally found the time to come to their meeting on point to talk about the Gods and the world, Little Sam, and what his latest studies revealed.

“Red comets, bleeding across the sky. I remember that,” Jaime agrees, nodding his head. “One almost hit me in the head.”

“Many heroes were born that day, amidst smoke and salt,” Brienne sighs, leaning back against his thighs slightly.

“And some heroines,” Jaime chimes. “Ha, I bet that Red Witch turned green the moment she realized that her precious prophecy of the _Azor Ahai_ was not at all what she thought it to be.”

“She was obsessed,” Brienne says, rolling her eyes.

And the Gods know how much she loathed her, hated her.

At some point Melisandre can count herself lucky that she didn’t receive the immortality handed out to the people how roaming the earth as history’s invisible children.

_I would have given her more than one uneasy time – for Renly. And Shireen._

Though she’d never know the child, Brienne is pretty sure that she couldn’t have reconciled herself with that woman the same way Jaime managed to come to terms with others now sharing eternity with them.

The calmness she believes to have gathered over the years is nothing Brienne had from the very beginning, so yes, Melisandre got indeed lucky that she passed before Brienne started to learn about the merits of calm, of forgive and forget.

“Tell me about it. That woman and her prophecies had a bad aim. First, she thought it was Stannis, and I mean… _Stannis_ … like, she could have picked _anyone_ but him… Then she thought that burning people would make Stannis _that_. Then she set her pretty, crazy eyes on the bastard son that was another couple’s bastard whose name was Snow… At some point I was honestly scared she’d set eyes on me next.”

He grimaces in irritation, thinking back to those times short before the battle against the dead.

_Talk about awkward reunions and strange first meetings in the North._

“I don’t know if she didn’t actually do that, in the end,” Brienne argues. “Short before we rode to battle… she kept looking at you the whole time.”

“She was looking at _you_ ,” Jaime corrects her. “And in any case, she was crazy.”

“ _That_ is true…,” Brienne agrees.

“She was really obsessed with that idea. A single hero to put a crown on top of his head after he won the war all by himself so he shall rule on as the child of prophecy, the child of wonder. What’s that obsession about, really? Doesn’t it ever cross people’s minds that wars are won and lost with more than one person involved? If it’s just a single man on either side, it isn’t a war, then it’s two people wriggling swords around,” Jaime huffs.

While studying history taught him that this is how those stories are apparently written, it doesn’t make them any more logical in the end.

Especially because they are given truth value despite the fact that they are only just stories, the same kind of stories that were told and are still being taught at schools about the Kingslayer.

_Some things just never change. No matter the time. No matter the space. Because “history” wrote the story that way, and no one wants to revisit. Because no one wants to reprint all of those tomes and school history books. That’d cost way too much money._

“It sounds more heroic, I assume. Just like in the fairytales.”

“Probably. Humans tend to be that arrogant. And it appears that we have been chasing just that fairytale for almost all of Planetos’ history. We want to believe in those tales _so_ very desperately. How a common man, one who stands very low in the social ranking, rises to the top and turns out the long-since foretold prince, _the Prince that was Promised_ , to save the world and rule on justly because… he is the hero, so why not?” Jaime shakes his head. “Gods, we are stupid. Considering that the assumption that more than one will be responsible seems much more straightforward.”

Brienne nods her head in agreement. “Rarely are battles won by only just a single man, _we_ know that. But I guess it’s just a human tendency of oversimplification that’s been in us for… well, probably the same amount of time that we have been chasing those fairytales. The Dance of Dragons. Robert’s Rebellion. The War of the Five Kings. The Dance of the Dragons wasn’t just about the dragons. People died, people lost their lives because the dragonriders could not decide who had the rights of rule. Robert’s Rebellion was not just Robert’s rebellion against the crown. In fact, he was perhaps no more than the initiator and the man to kill Rhaegar Targaryen by the Trident to be proclaimed winner of a fight he maybe wouldn’t have fought, had Lyanna and Rhaegar never met. And yet again, thousands lost their lives. And no one speaks of the lives you protected these days, as you slew the King.”

He smiles at her wordlessly.

Jaime always loves the way Brienne tells history, making it her story, their story.

“The War of the Five Kings. It is true that five kings fought over who should sit the Iron Throne, but their armies fought the war to settle those quarrels, unsuccessfully so, and that is very often forgotten in the stories. No one remembers their names, of those who fell in theirs. We only ever remember the heads, the king, the big names, the ones blown out of proportion. It makes things easier, to think with only just those in mind. It makes the horrific truths of war… more bearable. Because that means we can still sing songs about victories, when in fact, for that one king to rise, for that one king to win, hundreds and thousands had to lose.”

“So how do we summarize that oh so valuable lesson?” he asks, amused.

“Never trust prophecies?”

“Never trust prophecies, right,” Jaime chuckles. “How did it go again? That prophecy she was so fond of?”

Brienne taps her index finger against her lips. “Oh, let me think… Jon told me… _Born amidst salt and smoke, beneath a bleeding star_. There was a flaming sword at some point, and fighting off darkness, you know, the usual things.”

“Right, right… Well, in the end, there was an ounce of truth to it, I suppose,” Jaime says.

“Isn’t there always?”

“Well, Tyrion once taught me the valuable lesson that you should never trust prophecies – because they are like half-trained mules. Look as though they might be useful, but the moment you trust in them, the mules are going to kick you right in the head,” Jaime points out to her.

“Sounds about right. Well, good for us that we never believed in those prophecies, really,” Brienne sighs.

“Yeah, I didn’t fancy getting hit in the head by a mulish prophecy of that sort.”

“You were always more of an atheist anyway, so it makes sense that you never gave too much on prophecies in the first place,” Brienne argues with a grin.

“Well, in the end, some of it came about, if in different ways, right? Pyke’s salt beneath our feet to guarantee good footing, the smoke of the dragons breathing their fire. Red comets falling from the sky as the living fought the dead. And some many warriors earning their spurs, many people born and reborn. A dwarf, a young maester, a smith swinging his father’s warhammer, a mother of dragons, a stranger to both his families, with kraken and wolf in him, a man who had both ice and fire in his blood, a boy who seemingly became a crow, fading away before anyone could ever catch him, a girl who was no one, the Maid of Tarth, and the Kingslayer. To name but few. We surely made for a colorful bunch, covered in blood and mud, ashes and snow.”

“That’s the thing with prophecies. One should always take them with a grain of salt, as you said,” Brienne laughs.

It’s easier now to talk about these things because they are distant now, removed by time.

Back then, no one felt like a hero. All just felt the weight of loss, the weight of pain, of terror and fear, as the war went on against the dead in what felt like a small eternity on its own.

“And a cloud of smoke.”

“True,” she agrees, readjusting her grip on the blade still in her hands, resting on her exposed thighs. “Well, in any case, going away from those vicious prophecies, back to the more pressing matters of this wonderful blade here, that means it’s from the Reconstruction period. A Northern blade.”

“He or she?” Jaime asks. Brienne curls her lips into a frown as she runs her fingers across the blade another time.

Those questions are important, she knows. Part of the act of naming things is to find one fitting to his or her true self, that’s not any different with swords.

“Hm, feels like a she to me. her song is very elegant, very silent. She cuts through the air and doesn’t just push it away, the way the bulkier blade of a broadsword would,” Brienne goes on to say.

“What would you name it?”

Brienne looks at him, shaking her head, suddenly growing almost shy. “Oh, those are your swords. I named the one you gave to me.”

_And that is the one I call my own, because I named it. Always._

“But the best swords have names, we both know that,” Jaime argues. “I’d fancy having a sword remade that my dear lady wife named.”

“You are not just teasing me?”

“If I was teasing you, my hand would not be tickling the carpet, but would venture through your panties,” he laughs. Brienne rolls her eyes, shoving her back slightly against his thighs, making him chuckle only harder.

She looks back down on the blade, tries to see who she is, underneath the blue steel, at the core.

“ _Stardust_ , perhaps?” she says after a long moment. Jaime straightens up slightly to look at her. “I like the sound of that. Short but on point.”

“Do you have any ideas about what to do with it just yet, with the design?” Brienne asks, tilting her head in curiosity.

This would be the first time for her to see one of his swords in the process, the coming of age of a blade as it is breathed back into existence.

And Brienne cannot deny that she is ever the more thrilled at the idea.

History becoming steel, becoming flesh, to give the name gravitas, meaning.

“I was thinking about moon stones for the cross-guards’ tips. Silver. Disk-shaped pommel with milky quartz decoration, a crescent moon, perhaps,” Jaime tells her, nodding his head slowly as he calls the design he envisioned back to mind. “Yeah, that may be it. Dark brown leather for the grip. Now that we know that the blade is a Northern one, it should be the sturdy leather from the Northern regions the same way. And now that you mentioned the particles… maybe some star patterns for the engravings on the rain guard. But more simplistic. No unnecessary swirls. Clear lines. I don’t think it needs much more than that. What do you think?”

“Sounds like this is its true form,” Brienne says, now almost in a whisper, awestruck, taken aback, taken back in time.

“Do we ever know the true shape of things?”

“Oh, are we getting philosophical?” she snorts.

“Just pensive.”

“Brooding.”

“That, too.”

Brienne chuckles softly as she puts the sword down on the coffee table with a chink. She then leans back to rest herself against his chest, his arms instantly enclosing her, engulfing her, telling her without the need of words: _I am here. Always._

“So you return to me at last,” he sighs, pulling her closer.

“You know I always do,” Brienne argues, slipping up further a bit to turn her head towards him, pulling his lips to hers for a kiss that tastes of past and present and future all at once.

“Always will.”

_From this day, until the end of my days._

_Chasing you, the shape of you._

_Finding and rediscovering you._

_In me._

_With me._

_In the only way that "always" makes sense._


End file.
